When the Museum of Modern Art in New York reopens on October 21 after four months of construction, its galleries should look very different. The presentation of MoMA’s permanent collection and temporary exhibitions will include more works of art by women and artists of color. This change is part of efforts by museums across the country to embrace diversity and inclusion.
Ann Temkin, chief curator of painting and sculpture, explains that the redesigned MoMA will tell a variety of stories, “not a single story of a single story.”
Why we wrote this
How can the art on the walls of a museum better reflect the community it serves? New thinking among American museums suggests that a change is occurring that could reshape the works on display.
The priority of museums today “is to connect the power of art with the power of people,” says Monique Davis, executive director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. This involves putting on exhibits made up not only of “pretty pictures on the wall,” she says, but of programs that “build bridges of empathy” by reflecting concerns relevant to the community.
“It’s like a sleeping giant who woke up,” says Gregory Stevens, director of the Institute of Museum Ethics at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. “Museums will never be the same again.
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When New York’s Museum of Modern Art reopens on October 21, its revamped and expanded gallery space will reflect something trending in museums across the United States: a focus on those we hear less of.
An upheaval in the history of art is happening, and MoMA is emblematic of this revision. Early modern art narratives focused on mainly white male “geniuses” from Paris and New York. MoMA version 2.0 will be, according to chief curator of painting and sculpture Ann Temkin, “not a single retelling of a story” but more “a collection of short stories rather than a continuing novel.” She adds: “It sounds like a real change, which is part of a much larger change that has taken place in the history of art at the academic level and in museums.”
The presentation of MoMA’s permanent collection and temporary exhibitions promise to be varied, including works by women and artists of color who have been overlooked. This change is part of efforts by museums across the country to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion.
Why we wrote this
How can the art on the walls of a museum better reflect the community it serves? New thinking among American museums suggests that a change is occurring that could reshape the works on display.
“It’s like a sleeping giant who woke up,” says Gregory Stevens, director of the Institute of Museum Ethics at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. “Museums will never be the same again. He notes that their previous role was to conserve cultural heritage, but today “museums must be here in the present, sharing important ideas, information and inspiration about the world we live in”.
Independent curator Lowery Stokes Sims, who served on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum of Harlem, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, recalls that when she began her career, “We used to joke the curator’s first job was to make sure [visitors] had shoes on and did not touch art. The priority today, as Monique Davis, executive director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, puts it, “is to connect the power of art with the power of people.” This involves putting on exhibits made up not only of “pretty pictures on the wall,” she says, but of programs that “build bridges of empathy” by reflecting concerns relevant to the community.
This initiative, percolated for decades, has reached a boiling point in recent years. It became a critical issue after the Black Lives Matter movement shed light on racial injustice and in response to social issues like immigration, LGBTQ rights and gender equality. “Most art museums have been dominated by a white, masculine, colonial perspective,” says Professor Stevens, “so that the art exhibited and performed has been seen through a very narrow lens.”
Ms. Stokes Sims, who is African American, is blunt: “The canon today is totally irrelevant, patriarchal and racist. This makes its enlargement all the more urgent. A sign of change, for the first time in 70 years, Columbia University is reforming its core arts humanities curriculum, which taught Western art to all freshmen.
The current state of political polarization has spurred the update, according to Noam Elcott, president of the arts humanities and head of Columbia’s committee for the overhaul of the program. He says the more open embrace of white supremacy “called for an account,” adding: “An all-male, all-white program has ceased to be viable.”
In Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists organized a march in 2017 that ended with the murder of a counter-protester, the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia decided to dedicate half of its exhibitions of under-represented art. “It’s important to make a real and tangible commitment,” says museum director Matthew McLendon. “There are some tough conversations our society needs to have. Mediation through the work of art, respectful of cultures and experiences other than our own, adds a different content and a return of civility to the conversation.
The Baltimore Museum of Art is a pioneer in community outreach. An initiative called “Vision 2020” replaces the past myopia towards women artists with an entire year of exhibitions dedicated to them. According to director Christopher Bedford, the museum’s holistic approach “will imbue the institution with a different vital element.” The Contemporary Wing now features works by artists of color “to establish a different canon that relates directly to the city of Baltimore,” he says. “As a cultural institution, we try to orient ourselves towards social service and really help people. Mr. Bedford admits, “I’m not sure art changes lives. People do. But I think art changes people.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
African-American artist Oletha DeVane, dubbed “the matriarch of the Baltimore art scene,” whose installation “Traces of the Spirit” is on display at the Baltimore museum through October 20, says she considers artists as visionaries and teachers who, by sharing their stories, can increase understanding in our pluralistic society.
For Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, the push towards diversity and inclusion is not only a social necessity, but also a smart business initiative for the sustainability of institutions. Most importantly, Walker calls museums “the most important institutions of our democracy.”
“We have to remember who we are,” he says. “Today, more than ever, we need museums to reflect and mobilize the idea of our identity as a people, to come together and remind us of what is unique in us and what we have in common.”
At this point, the concept of museums as models of inclusion and diversity is more ambitious than real. Recent studies have documented a dismal number of art acquisitions and exhibitions by women and people of color in the top 30 art museums over the past decade.
There is a long way to go, and it is not known whether the pace will loosen or pick up.
Ms Stokes Sims says she is happy to see “a new age dawning,” but she is skeptical about the sustainability of the trend: “The barrel is like a rubber band. You can stretch it out and it can always go back.
