{"id":8,"date":"2023-05-15T13:38:51","date_gmt":"2023-05-15T13:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ascjcapstone.com\/spring-2023\/yeonsuki\/?p=8"},"modified":"2023-05-15T23:28:33","modified_gmt":"2023-05-15T23:28:33","slug":"the-racial-reckoning-on-display","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ascjcapstone.com\/spring-2023\/yeonsuki\/index.php\/2023\/05\/15\/the-racial-reckoning-on-display\/","title":{"rendered":"The Racial Reckoning on Display"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art currently under construction in Los Angeles, courtesy of the Lucas Museum <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The pandemic and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement reshaped many aspects of society, but also our art world, leaving museums at crossroads. Lockdowns and social distancing requirements forced many museums to close their doors for almost two years, and during that time, many began to experiment with new forms of digital engagement for wider accessibility. At the same time, the BLM movement caused some museums to reflect on and change their practices and collections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From collections built on the exploitations of oppressed peoples to a lack of diversity among staff and leadership, traditional art museums were called out for their role in upholding sexism, classism, racism and even white supremacy. Museums curate historical artifacts, making it challenging for them to stay relevant to modern audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post-pandemic moment, museums have an opportunity to reinvent themselves and provide a more modern lens on the arts they focus on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Catherine Hess spent 37 years as a curator at the Getty Museum and the Huntington Museum. Hess noted two significant changes since the pandemic: increased online access to artwork and a heightened focus on diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion (DEAI). The latter transition stems from the police killing of a Black man, George Floyd. The BLM movement created momentum that washed over society, and that has since reached some prestigious art institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last two years, the importance of DEAI increased sharply among art directors, with 26% reporting it as a priority in 2022 compared to 9% just two years earlier<\/a>. That near tripling in interest highlights how the art world is rethinking how museum institutions collect and display objects, hire more diverse staff and expand their programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is expected to open in 2025, with George Lucas\u2019 collections that mirror his eclectic taste ranging from Egyptian art, Renaissance paintings, comic strips, and 20th to 21st-century art, including Black and Hispanic artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lucas Museum promises to focus on DEAI and, if successful, could serve as a model for established museums still grappling with change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reframing Art on Display<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Some larger museums have been slow to address DEAI issues. This stagnation can be attributed to factors such as established institutional practices and resistance to change. However, a few smaller museums like the Huntington Museum and the Torrance Art Museum prioritized DEAI values before they became mainstream concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all changes are sweeping. At the Huntington Museum of Art, DEI manager Monique Thomas noted the museum\u2019s decision to remove a historical figure from display, a bust of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Removing such statues can be seen as a symbolic gesture toward creating a more inclusive and equitable society, according to Thomas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More recently, Huntington invited and commissioned a renowned Black artist Kehinde Wiley for a modern reinterpretation of Thomas Gainsborough\u2019s 18th-century painting \u201cThe Blue Boy\u201d to show that the museum was open to new perspectives. Wiley\u2019s 21st-century \u201cPortrait of a Young Gentleman\u201d juxtaposed with \u201cThe Blue Boy\u201d show how Western European paintings filled with England\u2019s 18th-century white aristocrats can be reimagined to be more inclusive by focusing on Black figures missing from the museums Wiley visited growing up. \u201cIt\u2019s not replacing, it\u2019s widening the landscape,\u201d Thomas said as she entered another room with a Nigerian-born artist\u2019s collection hung across from two Western European paintings. The majority of art from the 1700s is white portraiture, Thomas noted, but now the conversation has widened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Torrance Art Museum has two galleries that focus on contemporary art, but the pandemic spurred the museum to widen its reach to the public. In collaboration with Discover Torrance, WINDOW is an ongoing public art project displayed in the storefront window of the Del Amo Fashion Center. The rotating installation is open to all artists. \u201cCreating democratic art is my jam, as much as I love having things in the museum,\u201d said Hope Ezcurra, outreach specialist and WINDOW curator. \u201cArt belongs to all of us in a way and we should all have the chance to be exposed and enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ezcurra is also working on \u00bfWILD?, an ongoing public art residency project in collaboration between Torrance Art Museum and Madrona Marsh Preserve and Nature Center founded in 2022. The project gives artists a chance to interact with researchers and biodiversity in order to present public artwork on the Madrona Marsh wetland for four months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DEAI efforts by the Huntington, Torrance Art Museum and other museums are beginning to draw attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-Mexican and queer figurative sculptor Roberto Benavidez, who specializes in brightly colored hollow works inspired by pi\u00f1atas, said that museums are increasingly asking for voluntary DEI information when submitting for grants. Benavidez noted his hardship showcasing the cultural significance of his pi\u00f1ata-based art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a lot of work to get people to see my work as pi\u00f1ata-based as opposed to just paper. It was easier for them to sell that way,\u201d Benavidez said. \u201cNow, I think that there\u2019s a full embracing of that [term pi\u00f1ata] now, so I\u2019m happy about that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Staffing @Changethemuseum<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Instagram account @Changethemuseum<\/a> was founded soon after the BLM movement by a group of artists, curators and others in the art world who questioned museum leadership and diversity policies. With more than 51,000 followers, the account has more than 800 posts citing incidents about microaggressions, macroaggressions and encounters with senior-level management to HR teams at major U.S. art museums. The posts are all anonymous but aim to increase accountability in museum institutions by pressuring decision-makers to take concrete action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two years ago, the Huntington Museum was named in at least five posts<\/a> concerning the lack of representation of people of color in art collections and the museum\u2019s efforts to address various concerns about a lack of diversity and sensitivity. Since then, Thomas said, the museum has more than doubled its HR staff and focused efforts on training docents, who are often \u201cthe first people of contact and need cultural humility.\u201d More than a third of the 1,100 docents are older white people volunteering, Thomas said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As chairwoman of Huntington\u2019s DEI committee, Thomas developed a strategic DEI plan<\/a> outlining goals and action plans to promote diversity among staff, volunteers, leadership, visitors, communities and collections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn terms of post-George Floyd, the most important development that I\u2019ve witnessed is a real concerted effort to diversify staffing at museums,\u201d 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times Art Critic Christopher Knight said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several museums have recently added DEAI positions, including the Hammer Museum in Westwood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a demographic survey of art museum staff conducted by Ithaka S+R last November in the United States, over 40%<\/a> of younger staff and newer hires were people of color. The diversification of museum leadership has not kept up. The survey found that diverse representation in such positions remains at less than 20%<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less Turnover at the Top<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe most difficult area to change in terms of personnel is on the Board of Trustees,\u201d Knight said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of attention paid to the professional staff, as there should be. But there also needs to be much more attention paid to boards of trustees in terms of their diversification. And I don\u2019t see a whole lot of that happening. On an institutional level, that\u2019s a bit disturbing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) commissioned a study in 2017 that found almost half of all boards in American museums were 100% white<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More recently, in an art museum trustee survey in 2022 by the Ithaka S+R and the Mellon Foundation, more than 900 board members at 134 North American art institutions found that just only 28% of trustees are people of color<\/a>, and only 6% identify as Black or African American.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there are signs of a larger change in some areas. The 2022 art museum staff demographic survey found that the representation of female employees in museum leadership increased from 58% in 2015 to 66% in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the new Lucas Museum, Sandra Jackson-Dumont was named museum director and CEO, along with five other women in top leadership roles<\/a>: Managing Director of Learning and Engagement Nenette Luarca-Shoaf, Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Curatorial and Collections Pilar Tompkins Rivas, Director of Special Events Anais Disla, Managing Director of Special Projects Larissa Gentile and Director of Computing and Infrastructure Erica Neal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, the board includes two women of color among its nine members, George Lucas\u2019 wife, Mellody Hobson, and President of Skywalker Holdings Andrea Wishom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne thing that is important as someone working in talent acquisition that I\u2019ve grown to understand about museums across the United States is that there\u2019s a lot of talk about breaking the status quo within museums, \u201cLucas Museum\u2019s Director of Talent Acquisition Lysa Flores said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flores said that the recruitment process for lower-level management includes people of color on the hiring panel to help ensure finalists are a diverse and inclusive bunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DEI Programs Across All Levels<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

And then there is diverse programming capable of engaging staff, artists in residency and interns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the death of George Floyd early in the pandemic, the Diversity and Inclusion Group (DIG) at the Hammer Museum, created in 2016, started questioning whether the group had institutional power and support from the museum or if it was merely created for the optics. According to Nancy Lee, Public Relations Senior Manager at the Hammer Museum, this led to adjustments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBudget allotment increased since 2020 more towards diversity work. So they [the DIG staff] weren\u2019t starting from scratch, but [the progress for DEI] certainly boosted in the last few years,\u201d Lee said. The demand for institutional DEI continued to grow at the Hammer Museum as it took a closer look at fostering DEI conversations among staff. Meanwhile, other museums, like The Broad in Downtown Los Angeles, implemented a DEI program for artists in residency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Broad\u2019s Diversity Apprenticeship Program (DAP)<\/a> is for people from underrepresented communities – Black, Indigenous, people of color, women, immigrants, LGBTQIA+, formerly incarcerated and foster youth. The program is a nine-month full-time paid apprenticeship that provides a more equitable workplace in the museum world as it trains individuals in art handling and preparation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside the museum walls, the Lucas Museum is looking to tap into more than 100 schools<\/a> in the area and bring about diversity through education. Since the passage of Proposition 28<\/a>, a key state law that provides art funding for every school in California, the Lucas Museum has already started meeting with local teachers to discuss youth and K-12 programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lucas Museum is not only curating education programs for youth and elders but also changing how people look at art in museums through narrative art. Narrative art<\/a> visually represents stories and their meanings through figures, actions, iconography, atmospheres, and viewers’ perspectives. \u201cIt would require some shifting for people who are more used to traditional categories of art history,\u201d Luarca-Shoaf said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Lucas Museum builds itself from scratch, it presents a unique possibility to create a museum without centuries of entrenched traditions and practices as other museums today are making up lost ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t take it for granted that it is such a rare opportunity to not have to navigate 100 years,\u201d Luarca-Shoaf said. \u201cIn order to be a museum of today, we are building the museum of today, today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pandemic and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement reshaped many aspects of society, but also our art world, leaving museums at crossroads. Lockdowns and social distancing requirements forced many museums to close their doors for almost two years, and during that time, many began to experiment with new forms of digital engagement for wider … <\/p>\n

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