It’s hardly news anymore that museums across Europe and the USA are currently embroiled in a great struggle. The struggle is about who museums are for, and what museums do to recognize their audiences. Although many institutions do not acknowledge this struggle at all (unlike the omnipresent financial struggle), this by no means makes it go away. To the contrary, it only makes the museums who ignore it appear more lamentably mired within the antiquated power structures and elitism condemned by progressive new movements particularly within the last year.
Two news articles came up recently that make this topic worth reflecting upon again.
Postponing the Philip Guston Exhibition
Several museums planning a traveling exhibition of work by Philip Guston decided earlier this year to postpone the show. The rationale was that the artworks, many of which feature Ku Klux Klan members, are triggering, particularly after the murder of George Floyd. (But there are other, related reasons, well explained in this article.) Like many of the press, I too was suspicious of the decision and feared the worst: museums are once again avoiding responsibility to address the most relevant social issues of our day, seeking instead to preserve their own advantageous position within the ancien regime by simply not talking about it.
But no!
Enter my all-time hero of museum directors, Kaywin Feldman. As head of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, one of the museums organizing the Guston show, she gave a fantastic interview about what is really at stake behind the decision: “I would stress that I’m absolutely committed to doing this exhibition and I believe in Philip Guston. I’m not sure that I would argue that the public needs a white artist to explain racism to them right now. That, combined with the meager track record that the National Gallery has of showing and engaging artists of color, makes it difficult that one of our first major exhibitions about racism is from a white perspective.” Hear hear! Feldman supports this statement by pointing out how the institution is acting on the mandate to diversify, rather than just publishing a letter about it (as many other institutions did). She even mentions working with the gallery security guards to better understand and engage the public! I absolutely love hearing this, because to my mind the museum guards are one of the most undervalued assets of museums worldwide.
This is in keeping with Feldman’s heroic work of previous years, like that presented in her essay “Guerrillas in Our Midst: A Museum Director’s Appeal for a New Feminist Agenda” (in the volume Feminism and Museums: Intervention, Disruption and Change, 2017). It is an inspiring read. If you can’t find the book, get in touch and I can try to help you.
Vandalism on Museum Island, Berlin
The other news item is the recent vandalism in several museums on Museum Island in Berlin. This occurence has been marked by a lack of transparency from start to finish, beginning with the delay of more than two weeks for the story to break into public news. Since then, the museums have published a short online statement with the basic details of the event, but have not addressed their communities in any other way.
I would argue that this horrible act of vandalism offered a chance for the museums to rally supporters to condemn the act with a shared voice. The public is shocked and horrified – why not use that to build solidarity and support for culture, and to send a strong message to both past and would-be perpetrators that society is against their actions? This would be a much stronger message than the dry, burocratic finger-wagging that has been the entire response so far. People want to rally around their museums – museums just need to give them the chance.
The title of this post is taken from the movement of staff at the Guggenheim museum to organize into a union. They adopted the hashtag #DoBetterGuggenheim. This is both a symbol of the need to resist and reform ossified institutions, and a successful example of it starting to work! Comment below with any other examples you know about!