Ethos of Care Community of Practice launches soon

• Post Date: 3/11/2026
• Author: Elizabeth Sutton, director
• Reading Time: 2 minute read

• News tag

Spurlock Museum is partnering with the Humanities Research Institute to found Ethos of Care A Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Community of Practice Guided by Reciprocity, True Collaboration, and Radical Empathy. The field of museums and cultural heritage care and research is rapidly evolving. This Community of Practice grows out of a need for mentorship, new training, and conversations around how we can work in these spaces in a more ethical and non-extractive manner. Through the creation of a cross-disciplinary network, we hope to support each other in developing new best practices that are more relevant and ethically sound.

The Spurlock Museum has changed a lot over the past decade. We began to look critically at our past collecting practices and identified numerous works and collections that have problematic provenance. We now consult with countries of origin and descendant communities regarding the care of the objects, works, and beings currently housed in the Museum. We developed a voluntary repatriation program to provide a mechanism for ethical returns, and we also created co-stewardship agreements so that we can care for collections as a partner with communities of origin. A community curator program was established so that new, important voices can be heard in museums and communities of origin can tell their own stories. While the Spurlock has much more work to do, we believe this Community of Practice will challenge us to continue to make bold and brave decisions for the benefit of the communities we serve.

The Community of Practice launches in the 2026–2027 academic year. Faculty, staff, and graduate students can apply by March 24 to be a member of the founding cohort for our workshop series. Additionally, the Community of Practice will host mentoring sessions for graduate students and programs and events that will be open to the public. For the workshop application and more information, please visit Ethos of Care on our website and share this URL within your networks: https://go.illinois.edu/ethos-of-care