Last May a not surprising (but truly appalling) story hit the news in Boston.
Students from Davis Leadership Academy in Boston, a school modeled after historically black institutions, visited the Boston MFA on a field trip. They were subjected to racist remarks from museum visitors, as well as micro and not so micro aggressions (allegedly from visitors and staff) that showed they were not welcome at the museum.
Both my Tropenmuseum visits and the Decolonizing Europe course showed me that it is important to examine how museums were created by and for those in power. Very often there is a clear cost to colonized cultures both in the past and in the present. Museums were built on exclusivity.
Is it any wonder the students of Davis Leadership Academy felt excluded?
My Facebook posting at the time:
“I heard the MFA director, Matthew Teitelbuam, on NPR today genuflecting to apologize for the incidents of racist comments the students from Davis Leadership academy had suffered. Never once did he address the historic origins of museums as rooted in colonialism and racism, and the MFA's lack of art by people of color (outside the 10 artists they added to the permanent collection in the recent update...I counted), and the lack of sincere engagement in addressing how the works in the collection were acquired and possible restitution.
He said (more than once) he wanted all Bostonians to see the museum as home, yet kept referring to them as "visitors"...while this is a common phrase, it is also a telling one.
The MFA needs to look to museums doing the hard work of reckoning with their colonial pasts (actual or power-imbalances).
They need to let go of idea of the museum as authority (not as the knowledgeable, but as the authority). There is some good work happening at the Tropenmusem, and also by the head of the Stedelijk Museum in Scheidam (NL). Some radical innovative work happening at both places.
The MFA has harder work to do than Tietelbaum suggested.”
I have always thought of the Boston MFA as incredibly conservative. They are woefully lacking work by artists of color, and have only recently begun to address the lack of representation by artist of color in their contemporary wing update. They are definitely behind the curve on this. Embarassingly so. While other museums are not perfect, they understand the necessity of providing voice to artists of color and therefor people of color, as well as educating the public around the historically excluded voices.
Museums were conceived of in the context of colonial history. This history (and how it affects the present, including the objects sited at the museums) must be addressed if there is to be movement away from museums as sites of exclusion.
The ramifications of this historical imbalance was felt viscerally by the students of Davis Leadership Academy.
When I spoke with Hanna Piksen, the education director of Het Nieuwe Institute of Rotterdam, we spoke about how to make museums relevant to people of color when the establishment of museums was to speak for and benefit those in power. Piksen’s phrase that stuck with me was that “museums need to let go of authority”.
So simple, yet it feels radical.
It is likely threatening to curators who hold onto the idea of owning expertise. It took the MFA a while to admit any culpability, to be truly humble and not defensive. To this date I have not seen any reflection on the power dynamics at the root of museums very existence come from the museum, or in most news articles I have read.
Piksen mentioned the work of Deirdre Carasso, director of the Stedelijk Museum in Schiedam (NL). Carasso sat in the museum galleries with a bowl of candy, inviting museum goers to have a conversation with her. She positioned her desk near a window to the street, offering to converse with walkers by about the museum. The museum even offered pay as you can lunch buffets, and to water your plants while you were on vacation.
While this may seem silly and out of the norm for the historical role of a museum, that is the point. It positions the museum as the helper, as the servant, as the listener. It is the job of the museum to come to you.
Progressive education often questions the idea of education being uni-directional; of the teacher lecturing on their expertise to an audience of obedient students. We encourage our students to ask why, to ask where the information came from, to offer their own experiences as part of the narrative, and to challenge assumptions while being ready to put in the work to prove otherwise.
Teaching in a progressive context has shown me expertise can come from groups, and from conversations. It can come from learning to see your position in a given social structure, to question it, and to listen to the voices and stories of the marginalized.
Ways to practice “letting go of authority” are needed to keep museums relevant, and to begin to confront modernism’s hangover of colonization.
One story from the Davis visit was that a young girl was dancing to the music being played at the Gender Bending Fashion show. A guest of the museum verbally likened her to a stripper. Appalling for sure, but it also says something about confronting the museum's authority by dancing.
You are not “supposed” to dance at a museum, to defy the seriousness of the institution. You are not supposed to express yourself physically, to challenge the passivity a "good" museum goer practices. I can’t help but think in Schiedam the dancing would be encouraged. (As a maker of art I can’t imagine a bigger compliment than someone dancing to my work.)
Museums need to let go of their authority. I am also thinking about how this can also take place in my own teaching.
“If you want a museum that is inclusive, you have to listen.”
Dr. Wayne Modest
Articles on the MFA incident
Davis Leadership Academy Student Demands of the MFA
MFA's Press Release on the Incident
MFA's "Toward a More Inclusive MFA
https://www.mfa.org/about/toward-a-more-inclusive-mfa?utm_source=dm_development_miscellaneous&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=development&utm_content=version_A&promo=20501
*there are no comments in any of these articles or the MFA's statements about the history or context of the museum as an institution
Davis Leadership Academy
Wayne Modest’s words project
Story from NY Time on how some Dutch Museums are reconsidering the past:
A Dutch Golden Age? That’s Only Half the Story
Stedelijk Museum Schiedam
Hanna Piksen on Twitter (in Dutch)
Het Nieuw Instituut website
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