The Indianapolis Museum of Art in Newfields has apologized for a to-do list looking for a new director who can attract a more diverse audience but keep the “traditional, basic, white art audience”.
The New York Times reports that the director and executive director of the Newfields Museum, Charles L. Venable, said in an interview that the drafting of the list of works was intentional. He said the listing meant that the museum would not abandon the existing public as it sought a more diverse and inclusive crowd.
“I deeply regret that the choice of language has not worked clearly to reflect our overall intention to build our main artistic audience by welcoming more people to the door,” Venable told the Times. “We tried to be transparent about the fact that anyone applying for this job really has to commit to DEI’s efforts in all parts of the museum.”
Malina Simone Jeffers and Alan Bacon, guest curators for Indy’s upcoming exhibition “DRIP: #BlackLivesMatter Street Mural,” told the Times they could no longer continue as guest curators. Simone Jeffers and Bacon are the founders of GANGGANG, an Indianapolis-based incubator that elevates artists by color.
“Our exposure cannot occur in this context and this environment,” Simone Jeffers and Bacon said. “We asked Newfields to revisit this exhibition to include apologies to all the artists involved, the opportunity for the 18 visual artists to showcase their other personal works with adequate compensation and a deliberate Newfields strategy to show more works by more artists. black. in perpetuity “.
“Until then,” they continued, “GANGGANG will not continue as guest curators of this exhibition.”
The Times notes that former museum associate curator Kelli Morgan, a black woman, resigned in 2018 because of what she referred to as the “toxic” and “discriminatory” culture in the museum.
“Clearly no investment or attention is paid to what is being learned or communicated in training,” Morgan said when he arrived at the Times. “Because if there were, there would be no way a publication like this would have been written, let alone for a museum director.”
Morgan added that the incident at the Newfield Museum was an indicator of a larger problem in museum culture. As the Times points out, spaces like museums have largely excluded people of color.
“Until the world of museums is black and white and red and purple, and until we collectively address the responsibility for discrimination, things like this will continue to happen,” Morgan said.
In July last year, amid renewed protests by the Black Lives Matter, several former Smithsonian staff members filed allegations of racism dating back years to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art (NMAfA).
In a letter to Lonnie Bunch III, the first black chief of the Smithsonian Institution, former officials described a culture of racism that persisted through multiple different leadership changes.
“Recent events have drawn the most attention to systemic racism in museums across our country. With that in mind, we are writing to express our outrage at the current state of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, “the letter said. Our goal is to collectively express our concerns and participate in building an equitable and inclusive museum for our community. ”