Kudos, Questions, and Humility: A Week in Review

First Kudos: To Mike Murawski for his new book, Museums As Agents of Change, released this week and available through Routledge. A co-founder of Museums are not Neutral, Murawski is a change maker himself, which is just one of the reasons this book is important.

Second, a shout out to AAM. In February I wrote a post complaining about how AAM's newly-released Trendswatch had sidestepped the ways the pandemic harmed working women globally, and specifically women in the museum world. This week while scrolling through an AAM newsletter, I came across a link to Supporting Women in the Workplace During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic. It takes a big-hearted organization to course-correct, so thank you to AAM for providing resources for 50.1-percent of the museum workforce. And if women's issues within the museum world concern you, join Gender Equity in Museums or GEMM.

Third, a bravo to my friend Frank Vagnone: If museum directors had fans like boy bands, I would be lined up post-concert to see Frank, president and CEO of Old Salem, Inc. Thoughtful, smart, and someone known to push the envelope on occasion, Vagnone writes the blog Twisted Preservation. This week he posted about the need to see COVID for what it is--not an 18-month stop between normal and new normal--but an inflection point that will leave many organizations devastated and fundamentally changed. If you're a museum or heritage organization leader, you should read his post, and maybe use it as a point of discussion with your board.

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And the deaccessioning debate continues: I am struck by the way this debate has become a binary choice. You're either for it--a progressive--or against it or at least cautious about it--a traditionalist. And like all things in 2021, deacessioning is personalized, becoming a lens with a bifurcated view of the art museum world because, let's face it, history and science museums aren't making millions deaccessioning.

Lee Rosenbaum went so far as to metaphorically pit Christopher Bedford, director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, opposite Phillipe de Montebello, former director of the Met, writing that Bedford is among "the new crop of museum directors and curators have embraced social and political progressiveness as a primary part of their mission." Rosenbaum suggests that "inclusivity and social relevance are laudable" but cautions "patience so museums don't trash the time-honored achievements of past professionals."

Where to start? Maybe with the idea that as I said a few weeks ago, deaccessioning is a tool in a tool box, a necessary one, but one that in order to wield successfully, needs a deep collection, a degree of wisdom and sophistication on the part of curators and museum leadership, and a strong community understanding. Second, that it's possible for smart, thoughtful, forward-thinking organizations to hold two (or more) ideas in their heads at the same time--pruning and shaping the collection to help it better speak to the wider community--while also trying to create an equitable workspace that honors the values museums profess to support. Perhaps communities of color and museum staff are tired of waiting for museums who are afraid of trashing the time-honored path representing the way we've always done it?

When did putting community--whether that is your security guard's hourly pay or your local community's access to your collection-- become a bad thing? Is it okay as long as it doesn't privilege BIPOC artists over established white, male artists? Shouldn't we all be modeling ofbyforall.org's five steps for change? And how will change happen if our first act is to rush to the barricades defending what cannot change?

AAMD is like an exclusive gentleman's club from the 1950's. It costs money to belong, when you're inside it seems powerful, but in reality its enforcement powers are limited. According to The New York Times, a recent vote on whether to codify the relaxed deaccessioning rules of COVID lost 91-88 with 48 members abstaining. Perhaps the 48 abstainers sided with MoMA's Glenn Lowery who suggests this type of decision making shouldn't happen in the middle of a crisis. And despite vaccines, and the falling number of COVID cases, we are still in a crisis.

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And a lesson in humility: One of the lessons of leadership is that we continue learning. Always. Every day. And the day you stop, you should pack it in, and head for your rocking chair and your memories.

I manage a small collection inside a small, intentional community or a boarding school. Like any lone ranger, I wear the title "curator," but many other hats --educator, registrar, packer, exhibit designer--as well. Our campus is still officially closed, but last week we hung an exhibit of 22 portraits, part of a project for our 9th and 10th-grade studio art students. Each student will select a portrait, reckon with it, react to it, and create a new work in response. When complete, the student work, curated and selected by their classmates, will hang in dialog next to the collection work. So far so good.

I finished the week with the show hung, but not the labels. I was tired, a lame excuse in retrospect, but nonetheless true, so I reasoned the labels could wait until Monday. Here is one of the portraits, a dual image of Mary Birch Coffing of Salisbury, Connecticut with Jane Winslow also of Salisbury.

Mary Birch Coffing, 1782-1865 with Jane Winslow, a free Black woman, 1825-1872, by Edwin White, American, 1817-1877, oil on canvas, on loan from the Salisbury Association, Salisbury, CT.

In leaving the labels for another day, I forgot about my audience. I forgot they needed context, and most of all, in believing they could wait, I disrespected them. So when they reacted Friday evening about the portrait above via email and social media, it shouldn't have been a surprise. They were concerned. They wanted information. By Saturday morning I'd reckoned with my own blindness and all the labels were up. Further, we'd reached out to students and offered to talk about the show as a whole, and the Coffing/Winslow portrait in particular.

The lesson for me was not just how a lone ranger needs to push through and finish what was started. It was about the obligation to empathize, to put oneself in the position of one's audience, and try to imagine what tools are necessary to make their own judgements, to have their own dialog, their own reckoning. That's all art asks of us: to be there; to be fully present for more than the 20-seconds most of us devote to standing in front of a painting. If that's what we want from our viewers, then we have to give them a place to start that's truthful but not opinionated, that leads to dialog not misunderstanding, and most of all that is respectful.

The good news is I know I'm still learning. I hope you are too.

Joan Baldwin