The Indianapolis Museum of Art in Newfields has apologized for a vacancy seeking a new director who could attract a more diverse audience but retain the “ traditional, crisp, white art audience. ”
The New York Times reports that Newfields museum director and CEO Charles L. Venable said in an interview that the wording of the vacancy was deliberate. He said the listing was to indicate that the museum would not abandon its existing audience as it was looking for a more diverse, inclusive audience.
“I deeply regret that the choice of language has clearly failed to reflect our overall intention to build our most important art audience by welcoming more people in,” Venable said according to the Times. “We tried to be transparent about the fact that everyone who is going to apply for this job should really be committed to DEI efforts in all areas of the museum.”
Guest curators for the upcoming “DRIP: Indy’s #BlackLivesMatter Street Mural” exhibition, Malina Simone Jeffers and Alan Bacon, told the Times they could no longer stay as guest curators. Simone Jeffers and Bacon are the founders of GANGGANG, an Indianapolis incubator that elevates color artists.
“Our exhibition cannot be produced in this context and environment,” said Simone Jeffers and Bacon. “We asked Newfields to revisit this exhibition with an apology to all artists involved, the opportunity for the 18 visual artists to show their other, personal works with an appropriate fee, and a deliberate strategy by Newfields to bring more works of more black artists. forever.”
“Until then,” they continued, “GANGGANG will not continue as a guest curator for this exhibition.”
The Times notes that former museum curator Kelli Morgan, a black woman, resigned in 2018 because of what it called the “toxic” and “discriminatory” culture in the museum.
“It is clear that there is no investment or consideration given to what is learned or communicated during the training,” Morgan said when reached by the Times. “Because if that were the case, there would not have been any way of writing a vacancy, let alone for a museum director.”
Morgan added that the Newfield Museum incident was indicative of a bigger problem in museum culture. As the Times notes, spaces such as museums have largely excluded people of color.
“Until the museum world is black and white and red and purple, and until we collectively tackle responsibility for discrimination, things like this will keep happening,” Morgan said.
In July last year, amid renewed Black Lives Matter protests, multiple former Smithsonian employees made allegations of racism dating back years at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art (NMAfA).
In a letter addressed to Lonnie Bunch III, the first black chief of the Smithsonian Institution, former executives described a culture of racism that has endured through multiple different leadership changes.
“Recent events have drawn more attention to systemic racism within museums in our country. In this vein, we are writing to express our outrage at the current state of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, “the letter read.” Our goal is to jointly voice our concerns and participate in building a fair and inclusive museum for our community. ”