The Indianapolis Museum of Art in Newfields has apologized for a list of jobs looking for a new director who will bring a more diverse audience but maintain the “traditional, basic, white art audience.”
The New York Times reports that the museum’s director and Newfields executive director Charles L. Venable said in an interview that the list of positions was intentional. He said the listing was meant to indicate that the museum will not abandon its existing audience, as it seeks a more diverse, inclusive crowd.
“I deeply regret that the choice of language did not work clearly to reflect our general intention to build our main art audience by getting more people in the door,” Venable said, according to the Times. “We have tried to be transparent about the fact that anyone who is going to apply for this job must really engage in DEI efforts in all parts of the museum.”
The curators invited for the next exhibition “DRIP: Indy #BlackLivesMatter Street Mural”, Malina Simone Jeffers and Alan Bacon, told the Times that they can no longer remain as guest curators. Simone Jeffers and Bacon are the founders of GANGGANG, an incubator based in Indianapolis that raises black artists.
“Our exhibition cannot be produced in this context and in this environment,” said Simone Jeffers and Bacon. “We asked Newfields to review this exhibition to include an apology to all the artists involved, the possibility for the 18 visual artists to show their other personal works with adequate compensation and an intentional strategy from Newfields to display more works from many black artists. in perpetuity. ”
“Until then,” they continued, “GANGGANG will not continue as guest curators for this exhibition.”
The Times notes that the museum’s former associate curator, Kelli Morgan, a woman of color, resigned in 2018 because of her “toxic” and “discriminatory” culture at the museum.
“Clearly, no investment or attention is paid to what is learned or communicated in training,” Morgan told the Times. “Because, if it existed, it would not have been possible to write a post like this, let alone for a museum director.”
Morgan added that the incident at the Newfield Museum indicated a bigger problem in the museum’s culture. As the Times notes, spaces such as museums have largely excluded people of color.
“Until the world of museums is black and white and red and purple and we collectively take responsibility for discrimination, such things will continue to happen,” Morgan said.
In July last year, amid renewed protests over the Black Lives Matter, several former Smithsonian staff filed allegations of racism years ago at 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 staff members described a culture of racism that persisted through various leadership changes.
“Recent events have brought deeper attention to systemic racism in museums in our country. In this spirit, I am writing to express our outrage at the current state of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, “the letter read. for our community. “