Hope & Dread, Episode 5: Infernal Affairs
We’re going behind the scenes at the museum to better understand the recent groundswell of voices criticizing museum power structures as they exist, coming in the form of unionization efforts, artist-led activism and open letters by disgruntled staff. Are museums practicing what they preach? After all, if you can perfectly preserve a 14th-Century Persian carpet in a climate-controlled glass vitrine, shouldn't you be able to look after your staff, too?
Tune in to find out.
New episodes available every Wednesday.
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Guests: Catherine Arias, Fred Bidwell, Deana Haggag, Kathy Halbreich, Max Hollein, Kristan Kennedy, Mia Locks, Larry Marx, Ashley Stull Meyers and Marc Schwartz
By Emma Lee / WHYY Radio
Transcript:
Larry Marx:
There’s no doubt in my mind that a lot of museums have really acted like glass institutions and not been responsive to the world. That's got to change or it will change for them, and not in a very friendly way.
Charlotte Burns:
This is Hope and Dread. I'm Charlotte Burns
Allan Schwartzman:
And I’m Allan Schwartzman. This is a program about the tectonic shifts in power in art.
Charlotte Burns:
We wanted to hear from people who are making change, and people who are resisting change. If we walked from the streets to the museum’s front doors in last week’s episode, this week brings us inside the building.
We’re going behind the scenes. As you’ll hear, what’s happening inside isn’t too different than what’s taking place outside. It’s a moment of challenge to traditional authority; a swirling mass of disaffected voices reaching further and faster, thanks to technology. We are in the middle of an enormous debate over what it means to be a civic institution at all.
The overarching theme of the series is the shifts in power in art. And many museums are all about that power struggle: they have grand aims, after all.
But, are museums practicing what they preach? Or, are they presenting as slick, authorial, aspirational art brands to the public, whilst internally, behaving like scrappy underdogs on a mission?
We’ll hear from all sorts of museum stakeholders - from staff to donors and yes, you will hear some dread. But the clouds will part, and the sunshine of hope will warm us as we hear some solutions.
But first: if you can perfectly preserve a 14th-Century Persian carpet in a climate-controlled glass vitrine, shouldn't you also be able to take care of your staff?
Ashley Stull Meyers:
I think that art has failed. And then 2020 happened—which, you know, for all of us felt apocalyptic—it was really the time to put up and shut up, and it didn't happen. And it just felt impossible not to address the fact that we've been laid naked.
Charlotte Burns:
You’re hearing from the critic and independent curator Ashley Stull Meyers.
Ashley Stull Meyers:
This is a moment where we're seeing objects valued over people. We saw how deeply precarious lots of arts ecosystems are, and how some of these institutions that purport to be pillars or powerers of a community completely failed. We should be embarrassed that we told the world you know, all these higher-minded things that when it came time to prove that many, many institutions didn't get anywhere close.
Charlotte Burns:
It’s strong stuff. What Ashley and others are calling for is museums to live up to their brand values, essentially. The calls for equity taking place on the streets outside the museums are happening within those walls, too.
Mia Locks:
We're obviously seeing a groundswell of voices and criticisms of the museum power structures as they exist now. That's coming in the form of recent unionization efforts, artist-led activism, also some open calls and some articulations of need from staffs of varying levels, really asking museum leadership, museum boards, to take seriously the need for some real reform, if not kind of radical transformation.
Charlotte Burns:
That’s Mia Locks, an independent curator who’s also one of our three editorial advisors on Hope & Dread. Mia co-leads the new initiative, Museums Moving Forward, which is focused on accountability in the museum sector.
Museums need to be more equitable from the inside out, she says.
Mia Locks:
There's many ways to approach that idea, but I think that could look like examining your hiring practices, retention and promotion rates, pay equity. Are you taking advantage of people to protect your bottom line? Take a look at your harassment and discrimination policies. Who's running your board? What kinds of values are represented by your board? And you know, who's on your leadership team? Are they required to undergo regular management training you know? Are you conducting 360-evaluations and making changes on that feedback?
So there's a lot of noise, if you will, but the question I feel like is really who is being listened to. A lot of people are talking, a lot of people are demanding, a lot of people are asking, a lot of people are speaking out, but who's really being listened to?
Charlotte Burns:
Museums are far from immune to broader social changes; the ways people choose to communicate, question, fight every day. One of the most striking aspects of this podcast, for me at least, has been the realization that communication in our field seems broken. This puts museums in a position of acute vulnerability.
Beginning the interviews for this show, I think I took for granted that museums could—and would want to—shift, to weather these storms. Now, I don’t think they’re all going to make it.
We’ve recorded interviews with dozens of people for this show, and we spoke off-tape to many more. Each of these people is committed to art and culture, they want the best for it. And yet, their visions and experiences, their goals for the future of the museum, their understanding of the frailties of the current model—these conversations are not aligned. People are mostly not talking to one other.
For sure: change is scary, and so is getting it wrong. Lots of people we talked to were anxious about that, whether it’s public backlash or professional retaliation.
Kristan Kennedy:
I think we all worry about that. We have been called out about several things that were legitimate concerns from close members of our community and past staff. And I think the more we try to hide what goes on in institutions, the more paranoia is going to be generated.
Charlotte Burns:
That was Kristan Kennedy, artistic director and curator of visual art at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.
If you turn on the news, you’ll likely see a bunch of people arguing. Look to our politicians, who more often stoke than soothe. Museums are struggling with the same communication issues as the wider world. But, perhaps there is one simple thing we might all ask ourselves. Here’s the arts administrator and funder, Deana Haggag, who’s also one of our three editorial advisors.
Deana Haggag:
People are afraid to say that their feelings are hurt. And I don't want to sound so soft about that, but I feel like there are too many people in a position of power who try to find structural justifications for the critique against them, rather than just, for one second, be able to admit safely that their feelings are just hurt.
Charlotte Burns:
Lots of these feelings are shared across the sector. The collector and philanthropist Marc Schwartz, who is the former emeritus director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, recognizes the problems.
Marc Schwartz:There does need to be significant institutional change. Maybe things have gotten too big, and I think we've got to get back to maybe things that are smaller that are more easily sustainable; that don't create these conflicts that are tearing our communities and different constituents apart when they should be bringing people together.
Charlotte Burns:
Here’s more from Deana Haggag.
Deana Haggag:
Maybe what's missing—and we've seen this, this past year, as different staffs have really been frustrated more publicly with the places that they work—is really reconsidering wages, worker protections, safety measures inside the building or the institution. Sometimes the labor force at the institution is the last thing we think about in service of the building or the collection or the marketing campaign.
I don't say this antagonistically, it's complicated to raise money to try to keep your doors open, and then to be wondering about how to do everything better when the things that need to be the best tend to be public-facing.
Allan Schwartzman:
So I shared exactly those thoughts with a collector that I know well. This collector had a very different reaction than I expected. This person's viewpoint was, "I totally understand. And if you work in a museum and you feel that you're not adequately paid for what you do, you can work in another kind of company where the staff is better compensated."
And this person sits on the board of a major museum, which is not floating in the same kind of money as, let's say, the three or four largest institutions within this country. There's a much lower level of required giving. And they struggle to keep their collections in great exhibition condition. They struggle to be able to mount the temporary exhibitions that are necessary to serve their public.
This is a person who also believes in funding so many other needs within society, including housing for the homeless. Here's somebody who is saying, "I have to decide with every dollar I give, is it better spent in this way? Or is it better spent on creating more housing for a family that needs it?"
I thought that response also sounded reasonable, and therefore, I found all of this confusing. And I realized that this is another one of those gaps that we've spoken about in previous episodes. Who is looking after the interests of the staff? I don't think that this has bubbled to the surface in many institutions, until these last few years.
Is there a committee on the board of directors to ensure a healthy, productive work environment? I suspect not, in most situations. Most boards, the day-to-day thinking takes place at the executive committee level. Is the director's office focused on it? Or is it in the HR department? Is this massive realm of accountability compartmentalized? And most importantly, what I've been questioning, myself, is, has responsibility toward the staff shifted in recent years in response to the increasing urgency of such issues?
Charlotte Burns:
I think all of this is really interesting and it comes back to the point that Ashley made at the top of the show: what the pandemic laid bare was the extent to which our value systems are not aligned. Objects shouldn't be valued more than people. That's her point of view. And she feels that museums, which put themselves out in the world as a place for high-minded ideals, have failed us because they are not putting staff first.
I do understand the point about, if you're not happy, leave. But I think that's a lot of the issue that the staff have. This sense of being expendable. That there's probably just someone else to come along and replace you. There probably is, but it's not a great way of building an ecosystem that's sort of positive. A lot of these jobs are extremely niche and there aren't, actually, millions of people in the world wildly interested in not being extremely well paid to do a quite rare job.
Allan Schwartzman:
Yeah, for sure. And I think that this is one of those unaddressed consequences of growth. Boards have not usually been called upon to address issues of the daily functioning of the museum. The boards are charged with the fiduciary responsibility of the institution, and its health, and its ability to serve its public well.
Charlotte Burns:
It's also for whom they existed. When you're small and your staff looks like you, sounds like you, lives in the same zip code as you, that's a really different thing. When your institution is positioning itself—because the growth of the museum has been about the role that these institutions say they play—so, if you're positioning yourself as some kind of moral authority on the best paths in society and a place for enlightenment and deeper thought and understanding of each other, then what you're doing is saying that you are people-based, you are for the people. You're a place to go and understand the human condition a bit better.
Allan Schwartzman:
Yeah. But so many corporations have to think about the health of their staff and of creating a productive work environment because they do exist within competitive realms and museums haven't had to because they simply haven't faced them.
Charlotte Burns:
Old ways of doing things now need to change, says the collector and philanthropist Fred Bidwell. He’s the executive director of FRONT International and a trustee of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Fred Bidwell:
Museums do need to reflect on the way they've treated their own employees and make changes there. I think there's been an assumption that museums, by definition, are wonderful places and people should just love working there and that you don't really have to pay people that much because the personal reward should somehow compensate.
That's naive, that's arrogant, and it's incredibly unfair, and particularly distasteful in an environment where, especially many of the larger museums, are actually coming out of the pandemic more financially sound than they were going into the pandemic. That's reprehensible if they're not sharing that with their staff, and not rewarding their staff, particularly considering the stress that the staff is being put under, especially in this more fraught environment, where public expectations are way higher than they used to be. So you can't just keep treating the staff the same. You have to recognize that they're in the front line, they're doing really important work, and they need to get paid for it.
Charlotte Burns:
So what can you do to change your work culture? How can you permit change? How can you bring your staff on board as you grow?
Deana Haggag:
I think generally, a good organizing tool is, "Look at the most vulnerable person." The most vulnerable person's needs will protect everybody. That's how this works. We don't start at the top, we don't start at the person who's the least vulnerable, and then have them assess the needs of the group, that's not how that works.
Listening to folks who are generally left outside of the considerations of institutions tend to bring everybody together further and faster. So that is incredibly realized when we look at disabled organizers, women, queer folks, people, I mean, it's just like this is how the world improves, right? Is that we look at who has the most at stake for that improvement.
The reason diversity in a room is important is not to make our field look like some kind of Benetton ad; that's not what we're asking for. And the more diverse your team is, the more diverse your board is, the more diverse your leadership is, the more diverse your audience is, the better you get at speaking more than one language. Why on earth would I want to speak one language if somebody came down…if the universe came down and said, "Deana, do you want to be fluent in 15 languages?" It's like, "No, thank you. I'm really just comfortable in my one little space." And I think that's how we think about the organization itself.
Allan Schwartzman:
Bingo!
Charlotte Burns:
Right! Thanks, Deana.
Deana does that for us all the time, by the way, as do Mia and Jay but so often in the show, we will be struggling with how to word something, and then one of our editorial advisors will just do it for us. So, shout out to them.
So, Deana’s making a lot of sense there. Who wouldn't want a linguistic boost to hear some different kinds of stories and learn something new at work?
Charlotte Burns:
Some museums are broadening their remit, says Larry Marx, who’s on the board of directors at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Larry Marx:
In the old days, I think museums used to just think their constituents are their board of directors, the people who pay attendance, and their donors. Well, we're really public institutions and serve the greater community, and I think that's been an important shift. I think the other important shift is that one of our constituents are our employees and that they have a voice too in what's going on. So to me, the recognition of employees and the communities we serve has really been an important change, because truthfully for quite a long time art was really the privilege, or at least a lot of the visual arts, of well-to-do people. I think that's an important change and one that we can address.
Charlotte Burns:
Tough conversations are taking place inside museums across America. At LA Moca, everyone from the staff to the trustees are involved in conversations about what it means to be “safe”. Here’s Catherine Arias, the director of education and visitor engagement at the museum.
Catherine Arias:
People are really trying to unpack that term, and figure out what that means because I think if you come at it with a generational presumption that people just want to be coddled, then you're going to be resistant to hearing people's experiences of feeling unsafe.
But, if you come at it from this other perspective, and say, oh, wait a minute, actually… how do you surface these experiences in a way where you're opening up a dialogue, and you're opening up a conversation so that people can understand each other's perspectives.
Charlotte Burns:
How much of this is generational? How much of this is just a shift in society from individualism to more communal ways of working? Cue Museums Moving Forward, the new initiative that’s co-led by Mia Locks. It’s one of several new and really interesting groups that are focused on improving the internal structures and cultures of art museums. They are picking up on a powerful and meaningful moment in politics and society and applying their talent and hard work to try to create field-wide change.
For full disclosure, I should say that as one half of The Burns-Halperin report, that tracks inequity in museums and the art market through data together with Julia Halperin, the executive editor at artnet News, we enjoy a partnership with Museums Moving Forward.
Here is Mia again.
Mia Locks:
It's an intergenerational group of folks from various museums across the U.S. We have formalized and aligned around a set of core practices like power-sharing, mutual mentorship. And we prioritize the voices of those in the group who have experienced structural racism. I think for me, this group, this way of working, has provided some really important insights into some of the challenges that we've been facing in the field.
We have a shared leadership structure. Everything is deeply collaborative. No single person wields all the power or makes all the decisions. We work everything out, all together, which takes a while as you could imagine. But it's producing something profoundly different, and it's certainly producing better outcomes. Not to mention how good it feels to be part of a healthy and non-hierarchical work culture.
Charlotte Burns:
Lots of the ills we’re hearing about come from structures outdated for the moment. The typical pyramid structure of institutional power is being questioned, vigorously.
Mia Locks:
Some of these issues that we're talking about generationally, some of these issues about workplace culture, they do stem from this hierarchical thinking, this pyramid structure, if you will. If we work more as a constellation than as a pyramid, I think we'll get the best of people and create an environment that people want to work in. And that's something that I would really like to see, that I'm very committed to devoting my time to.
Allan Schwartzman:
This is a really interesting point, and it’s primarily a different generation speaking, one that, as we’ve been made abundantly aware, is dealing with the consequences of excess, greed and self-interest of their parents. And it's a consciousness that many women are leading, such as Deana and Mia. I think it's time to step outside of one's reality and recognize that these are leaders of the next generation. These are people who have come to viewpoints because of what they've experienced.
Charlotte Burns:
I really like that point because, over the past few years, it's really become more apparent that collaboration is at the core of so many of the meaningful changes that are happening within the field. Both Deana and Mia are examples of people who are working within coalitions. They work within a very broad frame of reference. They prefer to present themselves as part of a group. And they take a lot of strength from that group way of working.
And so, I think that's really interesting too, because that's something of a shift. Certainly for me, reporting on the art world, people didn't really present in coalitions before. It was very much about the cult of the leader, the cult of the individual, the cult of the great philanthropist, the great artist. This is essentially a shift away from that hero myth at a point when everybody's perhaps realizing no hero's really going to save the day. You're going to have to do it yourself.
Allan Schwartzman:
That's a massive point, Charlotte. All of the interesting so-called leaders working today, of a certain generation and younger, are people who are very quick to deflect to the people they work with, the people who preceded them, and the people who are working with them moving forward. The cult of personality, of the individual genius, that's being left off in the values of Modern art. We're moving into a very different time in terms of art, where it's going, how it will function in society, or how it functions in society.
I think we will likely find that the most effective and lasting changes that are brought into these systems in the coming years will come from people who are fundamentally rethinking the nature of leadership and challenging what the word authority has tended to mean, and what its anatomy has been.
Charlotte Burns:
One of the things that Museums Moving Forwards is proposing is a significant change to the legal structure, the ways in which we think about protecting our assets at institutions. By assets, we mean leadership teams. And so, NDAs are a very common practice within the art world, nondisclosure agreements, but there is this idea that we could change them, and in doing so, you can change the culture of a workplace. It's quite a deceptively simple sleight of hand.
Mia Locks:
What if either they didn't exist, or if they did exist, they were written in such a way that they centered workers, that they actually gave workers what was needed, rather than functioning as a kind of protection, ultimately, for institutions?
If a person is in a situation in their workplace and needs to negotiate an exit due to harassment or discrimination or what have you, if they leave and are silenced in the process, then it doesn't leave any opportunity for growth or change for the field. We can't talk about these things. We can't understand them. We can't grow from them. There's no learning. It's under wraps. And that person is usually not just silenced, but they're isolated. They're alone in their experience, which is also really traumatizing.
Charlotte Burns:
The thing that you had mentioned to me was specifically things around NDAs around discrimination. For example, if you are interviewing for a job at an institution, it would be very helpful information to know that there had been seven racial discrimination or gender discrimination or sexual harassment, whatever the issue, cases that had been settled by the institution and former workers without revealing necessarily the details of those cases, without revealing names or anything that was private, but just to have a sense of understanding of a culture that you are joining, I think is a really interesting and empowering concept. Because if you follow that through, that would really change the power dynamics. If an institution has great curb appeal, great brand recognition, is a powerful organization, but it turns out it's a nightmare to work for, people will no longer work there, so the culture would have to shift because they wouldn't be able to attract the talent that keeps burnishing their reputation.
Mia Locks:
Yeah. I have a hunch that there's a trend, right, that there's a field-wide culture issue that is pervasive. We've seen it. And I think that if you just see it here and there and don't discuss it, it's actually producing even more harm, because then it gaslights people into thinking, "It was just me in this weird circumstance," rather than seeing oneself or one's experience as part of a much larger systemic problem, you know?
Could you imagine what that would be like if you were interviewing for a job or if you were an artist but you had a sense of what was happening inside? Because most people don't, you know? It's not talked about. I hope it isn't about shame, or it doesn't sound punitive, but that it could be a place where some of that learning could happen.
Charlotte Burns:
Allan, I personally love the idea of rethinking the museum via its legal structures and how, what might seem like arcane details, could maybe lead to entirely new ways of working. Is this a radical idea?
Allan Schwartzman:
I'm a big fan of timeouts and do-overs, so the idea that we could all actually step back, look at where we are and see where we can go from here.
"What do we need in this structure that isn't here, that we didn't know to put in here, that we're now aware we need to put in here?" And I think that's the moment at which you want to bring everybody to the table. Every viewpoint should be represented in thinking it through. It's simply a pragmatic way of solving problems.
Charlotte Burns:
Allan, you're suggesting a timeout sounds amazing to me. I would happily take a timeout at this point.
We're going to talk more, much more, about who might want to be a director and who should. That's coming up in the next show. And in the show after that, we're really going to really focus on governance, talking to lots of trustees.
For now, the idea that the system needs a rethink is in the air. Allan, do you want to introduce our next guest?
Allan Schwartzman:
Kathy Halbreich has been one of the most significant museum directors of our time. For 16 years, she was director of the Walker Art Center, which has been a model institution that has been at the forefront of challenging and evolving its thinking in terms of collections and exhibitions. More recently, she was Associate Director at the Museum of Modern Art where her influence pervaded virtually every aspect of scholarship, research, exhibition-making.
She's now director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and through the Rauschenberg Foundation is doing some of the most innovative funding of the arts and culture of our time.
In the interest of transparency, let me also say that I provide some advice to the Rauschenberg Foundation.
Kathy Halbreich:
I think the cracks in the museum system are more visible today just as they are in the larger society. This systemic racism, the kind of whiteness of our major institutions, in fact, the history I learned was predominantly a white one. So I carry that forward as do most of my colleagues who were trained in this country. So I think it's a particular moment, but I don't think any of this is new.
These are fraught moments for institutions. I guess because I'm a melancholy optimist at heart, I also think the smart institutions and the smart leaders and my smart colleagues will figure out a way to make use of this turmoil and tumult. I don't think change happens smoothly. I think there are ruptures in history, that if we look back, suggest a way forward for us.
Charlotte Burns:
I asked Kathy how she saw the field moving ahead.
Kathy Halbreich:
Maybe the way forward institutionally is a slight displacement of the rigid hierarchies that have existed. Definitely, a way forward is to be more self-aware about which audience you serve and why. I think there will also be a need to be very forthright in terms of articulating the changes and going about making them.
For example, I think if one staff remains all-white, change is almost impossible. It doesn't matter what works you're acquiring. Because, really, change happens not only in a collection but in the philosophical structure that's developed through conversation among colleagues.
I believe in hierarchy. I believe in experience and expertise, but it's not a code for a club. I think hierarchy allows for an institution, actually, to potentially pivot faster. But I think the hierarchy needs to be porous.
Charlotte Burns:
Conversations around horizontal leadership are being discussed in museums around America today, even some of the nation's most storied institutions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
There have been, for the past several years, working groups within the Met. These are groups organized around particular issues or identities. Each of these groups operate in a loose coalition, but forming their own agendas. I asked Max Hollein, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art if the institution welcomes those changes.
Max Hollein:
Well, we very much welcome them. I don't see it so much as pressure groups; it's maybe like lobby groups in a certain way, but also, it's employee resource groups. To a certain extent it also allows employees to come together and that's especially important in an institution that's so big and sometimes even departmentalized and fragmented, in a certain way, like the Met.
The other piece in this is of course—I mean I know this sounds like a truism—but not only do you learn a lot, but it allows a level of engagement and participation and efficacy and involvement that is extremely important and healthy, and what it does is it cuts through hierarchies. But it's more about the ability of all different people being part of, not only a conversation, but part of the transformation of the institution moving forward.
It clearly still requires leadership, it requires decision making, it requires setting priorities, and also sometimes facing realities of what's possible or not. But as a tool for institutional development and evolution, I think it's extremely important, healthy, and very productive.
Charlotte Burns:
Do you see it as a kind of counterbalance to the power of the board, for example? Is that healthy in that way?
Max Hollein:
I don’t see it in that context. I think the board is engaged in the large strategic questions for the institution and all the direction that it goes. To a certain extent, questions that might surface through our thinking and maybe through some of the groups that you've just described, they might surface at some point to a board level to be discussed there, for informational reasons, or if it's kind of a completely strategic decision it, of course, needs the board approval.
Allan Schwartzman:
This is exactly the time where institutions will benefit from hardcore self-scrutiny and repositioning in order to create safe and highly productive places for the benefit of culture: its pasts, presents, and futures.
Charlotte Burns:
Allan, that's a great note to end us on, and before that, Max Hollein, the director of the Met. And we are concluding with the director for a reason. If last week, we asked whether we should just build new museums, next week, we'll ask who should run them. Who'd even want to? Join us for more.
CREDITS and GOODBYES
Tune into Hope & Dread every Wednesday and subscribe wherever you find your podcasts.
Follow us on social media for related show content, and tell us what you think @artand_media.
Hope & Dread is brought to you by Art&, the new editorial platform created by Schwartzman&.
The executive producer is Allan Schwartzman, who co-hosts the show together with me, Charlotte Burns of Studio Burns, which produces the series.
Robert Bound is our associate editor.
Holly Fisher mixed and edited the sound.
Additional research and support has been provided by Calder Singer, Catherine Sensenig, Ali Nemerov and Paige Scanlan.
Theme music by the inimitable Philip Glass.
Podcast Art: Emma Lee / WHYY Radio
