Laura Raicovich, former Director of the Queens Museum, New York, examines key flashpoints and provides historical context for today's controversies. She shows how art museums arose as colonial institutions that spread conservative ideas behind a mask of neutrality. And she suggests ways museums can be reinvented to better serve the public. At a time when cultural institutions are under fire, when protests have been sparked in places as divergent as the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim and the Akron Art Museum, Raicovich's insights couldn't be more pertinent. During her tenure at the Queens Museum, she helped turn it into a public commons for art and activism. Controversy followed the museum's response to Donald Trump's election and Raicovich's objections to the Israeli government using this public space for an event featuring Vice President Mike Pence. She resigned after three years.