Museums as Agents of Change: A Guide to Becoming a Changemaker by By Mike Murawski

Author:By Mike Murawski [Murawski, By Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: American Alliance Of Museums
Published: 2021-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

6

Leading toward a Different Future

S ince the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and throughout the ongoing protests demanding racial justice, we have seen evidence of a wide range of leadership qualities on the public stage—watching national political leaders on TV and through social media, seeing governors and mayors respond to these crises in their own states and cities, and feeling the effects of how those leading our museums and nonprofits have decided to respond. The behaviors of those in traditionally defined leadership positions have varied from being fairly brave, vulnerable, and serving the greater good, to acting in ways that are extremely harmful, self-serving, violent, and reprehensible. For museums, we’ve certainly seen this full range of leadership behavior—unfortunately, far too much of the self-serving, harmful kind.

Leadership at institutions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Getty, the New Orleans Museum of Art, Newfields (formerly the Indianapolis Museum of Art), and countless other museums have been called out for their inequitable and opaque decisions to cut and furlough staff; for actions taken to prevent staff from organizing and forming unions; for their role in creating and perpetuating toxic and racist work environments; for sexual harassment and abusive behavior toward staff; for censoring staff and community voices; and for unethical behaviors regarding collections practices, hiring practices, and artwork loan practices. In a few cases so far, demands for accountability from staff, former staff, artists, and community members have led to action—the executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland resigned amid calls for new leadership, and the executive director and chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit was forced to resign after charges of racism and abuse. In Canada, the president and CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights was forced to step down because of accusations of censorship, racism, and sexual harassment. And the Detroit Institute of Arts Staff Action group called for the resignation of the executive director amid a whistle-blower complaint filed with the state of Michigan and the Internal Revenue Service along with claims of a hostile and chaotic work environment at that institution under his leadership.

These are not isolated examples; rather, these behaviors are indicative of a field-wide crisis in leadership—a crisis that has existed for too long, yet has been exposed through more recent efforts to increase transparency, organize and take collective action, and hold institutions and those in positions of power accountable. As curator, writer, and activist Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell calls out in a recent open letter for Museum as Site for Social Action (MASS Action):

For far too long our field has been led exclusively by white, cisgendered, male, privileged, overly educated, wealthy, elite, upperclass, heteronormative, ableist, colonist gatekeepers. (Bryant-Greenwell 2020)

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