b'We are developing policies and practices to ensurethat everyone who works at and visits the museum feelsacknowledged and supported.digital programs with leaders in higher educationthe national average for colleges and universities. and museums focused on reshaping institutions toLooking to the museum field, in 2018, The Andrewbecome more forceful agents of social justice. TheW. Mellon Foundation partnered with the Association conversations have not only created shared historicalof Art Museum Directors, the American Alliance of frameworks that we are bringing to our work, butMuseums and Ithaka S+R to produce a demographic have also provided crucial intellectual and emotionalreport on art museums in the United States. The report ballast during these months. (in which SCMA participated) showed that 28% of staff We are developing policies and practices tomembers at museums were people of color, up from ensure that everyone who works at and visits the24% in 2015. At SCMA, people of color represent museum feels acknowledged and supported. This willroughly 11% of our staff. While this number alignsinclude practices to seek more diverse staff, to supportwith demographics for our area in Hampshire County,staff retention and to prioritize businesses owned bywhich is 88% white, our immediate community of people of color and women. By the time you read this, we will have added to our website six core values for SCMA, developed by our DEAI staff working groupA visitor in the museum lobby enjoying the Black Refractions artwork with input from all staff members, that establish sharedGive Us a Poem, 2007, by Glenn Ligoncommitments to each other and to our visitors. We are working on plans to create more support and stability for our security and visitor services positions, which are indispensable to the museums activities and formative to the experience of our visitors. All of this work has been propelled by the outpouring of energy, conviction and insight from staff members and from members of a DEAI working group on the Museum Visiting Committee that was formed in early 2020.Many of the steps we are taking now build on work we began well before 2020. But our approach has been transformed by what we have seen and learned this past summer, and the work that is hap-pening nownot just at SCMA, but in the broader museum fieldindicates real potentialities that have opened up in terms of how art museums understand and enact their missions. It is now up to us to make these potentialities concrete and enduring.Smith College itself provides prompts for further actions we must take. To highlight a few, the Smith student body is now 32.6% people of color and 18.2% underrepresented minorities. This puts Smith above'