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[abqartworkers]

Open Letter Regarding the Treatment of Gallery Curator Augustine Romero

October 19, 2020

Mayor Tim Keller Director of Cultural Services Shelle Van Etten de Sanchez Director of Office of Equity & Inclusion Michelle Melendez Deputy Director of Cultural Services Hakim Bellamy Public Art Urban Enhancement Division Manager Sherri Brueggemann

Dear Mayor Keller:

We hope this message finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy. We are members of the ABQ Art Workers collective working for racial and cultural equity within the Albuquerque arts and cultural spheres.

Recently, a concerning situation regarding racial equity within the City’s Public Art Division has come to our attention. We understand that Augustine Romero, the Gallery Curator for the City of Albuquerque, has been evicted from his office at the South Broadway Cultural Center. This raises questions about workplace mistreatment and possible discrimination. Mr. Romero has overseen the South Broadway Cultural Center and KiMo galleries since 2006. As the only curator of the city we are aware of who is working directly with living artists in our community, he is also one of the longest serving curators that is a person of color, identifying as a Chicano man. It is our understanding that Mr. Romero has been displaced to two offices, one in City Hall near the Department of Cultural Services and the other in the offices of Public Art at the Convention Center. This means that Mr. Romero is the only curator in the City of Albuquerque that is not based in the gallery where he curates the majority of exhibitions. This poses a major barrier to artists, many of whom are from underrepresented groups and who regularly met with Mr. Romero at the South Broadway Cultural Center to discuss shows and exhibitions. Now our choice is to meet with Mr. Romero in one of two offices located miles from the South Broadway Cultural Center. Another option is to conduct business such as signing contracts and discussing details of art shows in the parking lot or shed of the SBCC. The other option is to meet in a public space in the gallery with no office space. This is not only humiliating to Mr. Romero and artists, but it also speaks volumes about the lack of critical reflexivity on institutionalized racism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism within the division and the CSD.

This appears to us as a present-day, real-time example of the institutional racism that the City purports to stand in opposition to. According to the City of Albuquerque Office of Equity & Inclusion website, its mission is “[t]o inspire and equip city government to make Albuquerque a national role model of racial equity and social justice.” One of the stated goals of the office is to “[d]evelop a city workforce that is representative at all levels of the demographics of the city.” Also on the Office of E&I website: “We define inequities as disparities in health, mental health, economic, education, or social factors that are systemic and avoidable and, therefore, considered unjust or unfair.”

It seems to us that the actions of Mr. Romero’s superiors in denying him access to these spaces would severely hamper his ability to perform his workplace duties, thereby causing potential disparities related to his job performance evaluation and any potential promotion or salary increase. These are precisely the kinds of aggressions that people of color face in the workplace that lead to the vast continuing racial wealth gap in this country. Furthermore, racial equity with regard to representation within the leadership in the City as a whole, the CSD, as well as the Public Art Urban Enhancement Division appears to fall far short of the Office of Equity & Inclusion’s stated goal to have a workforce that is representative at all levels of our city’s demographics. We find it deeply concerning that the Gallery Curator, one of the few people of color in an important professional leadership position in this Division, would face such serious obstacles from his superiors to the proper performance of his job duties.  

We would like to understand this situation better and to know how the City will take immediate steps to correct this injustice. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

ABQ Art Workers: Szu-Han Ho, Albuquerque, New Mexico Autumn Chacon, Albuquerque, New Mexico Scott Williams, Albuquerque, New Mexico Nanibah Chacon, Albuquerque, New Mexico

[abqartworkers]

Oct 19 Open Letter Re: Race, History & Healing Project

October 19, 2020

Mayor Tim Keller Director of Cultural Services Shelle Van Etten de Sanchez Deputy Director of Cultural Services Hakim Bellamy Public Art Urban Enhancement Division Manager Sherri Brueggemann

Dear Mayor Keller,

We hope this message finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy. We are members of the ABQ Art Workers collective working for racial and cultural equity within the Albuquerque arts and cultural spheres. We are writing with regard to several concerns about the City’s actions and communications related to the Race, History & Healing Project and its response following the events surrounding the La Jornada monument.

Regarding the RHH Project, some of our members have participated directly in RHH sessions and have witnessed problems with lack of transparency, organization, and overall mishandling. Those concerns have been outlined in a letter sent to your offices on October 9, 2020. With this letter, we are bringing to your attention several troubling issues regarding the language and representation of the RHH Project, specifically on the project webpage at https://www.cabq.gov/culturalservices/race-history-and-healing-project

1. The image chosen for this website and the community survey site is an image from the La Jornada monument. If this monument (and all of its components) is the very source of the violence and discord that has taken place, why was this image selected as a representation of the RHH Project? It seems to us both tone deaf and actively re-traumatizing to the communities who have grave objections to this monument in its entirety. As you are aware, the monument is a representation of conquistadors and settlers entering what is now New Mexico: the colonizers enslaved Indigenous people and forced them to pay taxes and tribute to the Spanish crown. This led to revolt by the Acoma people, to which Oñate and his men responded by attempting genocide: they tried to destroy the Acoma village, leaving only 200 survivors out of the 2,000 villagers. Oñate ordered one foot of 24 Acoma men to be cut off, and he committed other atrocities that led even the Spanish crown to charge him with cruelty and excessive force. We cannot help but wonder if the selection of the image was related to the sculptural representation of the “Native American woman” and thus intended as a nod to some distorted notion of balanced representation. If this was the intention, we find it extremely condescending and insulting, not just to Indigenous groups calling for the removal of this monument, but to all who are interested observers and active participants in the RHH Project; in fact, it is an affront to all residents of this city who are the intended audience and who are tax-paying individuals supporting this project.

2. In watching a video recently published on the same webpage entitled “What is a monument,” we found the language and representation here to be extremely problematic and disturbing as a reflection of the city’s approach to the RHH.  The video describes La Jornada as such: “The artwork was intended to honor the founding families who entered the lands of the now-American Southwest from Mexico.”

Firstly, calling the settlers “founding families” already negates any supposed neutrality of the city’s position–no matter what the presumed intention behind the work was. This term is an insult to the Indigenous people who are the original inhabitants of this land and an insult to the Indigenous communities engaged in the RHH Project process.

Secondly, the video’s statement regarding Oñate’s entrance from Mexico is misleading. “Mexico” did not exist as a political entity during the late sixteenth and seventeenth century, the period being represented: the colonizers came from New Spain. This is an important distinction to make, so that your audience understands that Oñate and the conquistadors came in the name of the Spanish crown as part of a proselytizing, extractionist, and white supremacist project.

The above concerns may seem like minor issues of language. However, so much of the discord and conflict we have witnessed are due to a long tradition of misrepresentation of the historical record, from our school textbooks to public monuments and official representations. The City should be held to a high standard in all cases of historical representation, and especially this one. If the word “History” is to be included in the Race, History & Healing Project, we would expect the historical record to be communicated accurately.

Your website states: “The Race, History & Healing Project supports community-centered dialogue and input to inform community-led recommendations for the Oñate statue and La Jornada public art installation…” Indeed, our city has the opportunity to follow through on these admirable goals and to actually work to find “thoughtful solutions for difficult and complex issues.” We applaud the City’s commitment to the important work of equity and inclusion in partnership with the community. However, if the language used in the RHH is an indication of the theories and approaches grounding the project, we fear that it is bound to fail in achieving its goals. We strongly suggest that all city representatives involved in the RHH sit down for more meaningful dialogue with community members around anti-racism and anti-oppression. There are many community organizers in our city who can be valuable resources, starting with Kiran Katira and Diana Dorn-Jones with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond.

With the national uprising surrounding monuments and systemic racism in this country, we are witnessing a mass movement for accountability and dismantling of white supremacy within institutions at all levels of our society. It may sound surprising, but one can draw a direct line from the violent oppression of Oñate and the conquistadors to ongoing police brutality and carceral systems of the present day. Both represent agents of the state working to uphold white supremacist values whose goals are to supress Black, Indigenous, and people of color.

We thank you for your time and service to our city. We look forward to hearing your response to our concerns.

Sincerely,

ABQ Art Workers: Szu-Han Ho, Albuquerque, New Mexico Autumn Chacon, Albuquerque, New Mexico Scott Williams, Albuquerque, New Mexico Nanibah Chacon, Albuquerque, New Mexico

[abqartworkers]

October 9th Open Letter

To Director of Cultural Services Department                                                         October 9, 2020 Office of The Mayor Board of Directors of the Albuquerque Museum Public Arts and Urban Enhancement Division Manager Albuquerque City Council And Hakim Bellamy This letter is an effort to re-establish communication, as it seems we have been left on hold since our previous meetings. We wish to continue with our agreed upon agenda to address the systemic and institutional racism evident at the Albuquerque Museum, the municipal department that oversees it, as well as every other unit under the Cultural Services Department. I would like to check in with the entities and their representatives which received our articulated list of recommendations, including Alicia Manzano, Shelle Sanchez, Diana Delgado, Andrew Connors, Josie Lopez, and Sherrie Brueggemann; as we have been awaiting your response on how the city would like to work with its constituents to address our concerns and advice on how we the people may attain our desired outcome per your recommendations. That list as well as our previous correspondences can be found here: https://abqartworkers.net/
 I must point out that our last encounter on August 4, 2020 was very confusing to the public. You stated that you wanted to have an open meeting yet failed to provide the public with an agenda or goal for said meeting and then have failed to respond since then. I would also like to point out that since being left without follow-up, members of our group and attendees of the open meeting who are concerned about the museum’s inherent racism have been redirected to a controlled survey regarding the statue only. As we stated initially in our conversations with you and in our written demands, our interest in these meetings has less to do with the oppressive monument and more to do with the bureaucratic system which allows such oppressive content to harm our community repeatedly. Left with no other channels, we attended the Race History and Healing online space and were appalled by the suppressive and infantilizing facilitation of the process. During these meetings, we were even more frustrated that there were no opportunities to discuss the purported matter at hand (The Oñate monument); We were only able to interject it occasionally into the cumulative 6 hour session, in which a majority white group of participants were asked to list their values and then asked how those values can be reflected in public art. We view this as an attempt to once again collect and impose only white, eurocentric values onto the community; And to justify the colonial mechanisms this community is striving to abolish. We began our conversations with your department hoping to collaborate in good faith. At the close of our last meeting on July 30th, we left with the understanding that: 1) your department would reach out to us to establish the next meeting date; 2) the Cultural Services Department, the ABQ Museum staff, and the Public Arts staff would look closely at the changes we have called for and would bring a response to our next meeting regarding next steps for each of these entities. Not hearing from you about the date for the next meeting, I have reached out to your office twice since August 17th to request a date and have had no response from your office. The lack of a timely response and this administration’s failure to move as resolutely as the national movement demands is a major disappointment and frustration. We believe this is an historic opportunity to address the long-standing systemic and institutional racism that contributes to violence, deep inequalities, and death in our communities. We sincerely hope that your administration will take the necessary steps to dismantle colonialism, racism, and oppression in our city. 
We continue to wait for your response. Autumn Chacon, Albuquerque, New Mexico Szu-Han Ho, Albuquerque, New Mexico Scott Williams, Albuquerque, New Mexico Nani Chacon, Albuquerque, New Mexico

[abqartworkers]

Take our community survey!

https://airtable.com/shrRufiQAOWiF7qrU

Submit feedback to the ABQ Museum and City of ABQ Cultural Services:

CALL TO ACTION: The Albuquerque Museum is set to reopen at limited capacity this Tuesday, September 15. We are asking you––artists, curators, educators, and the public––to voice your opinion on the museum's exhibition and programming from the standpoint of racial & cultural equity. ABQ Art Workers will compile a report based on your feedback and present this to the city at our first opportunity. 

[abqartworkers]

July 30, 2020 Statement

July 30, 2020

This statement is a follow up in regards to the letter drafted to Mayor Tim Keller, Director of Cultural Services Shelle Sanchez, the Board and Director of the Albuquerque Museum, City of Albuquerque Public Art Division and whomever it may concern on June 18, 2020.

On behalf of the many artists, curators, educators and museum administrators, who signed my original letter, thank you for your ongoing efforts to address systemic racism in the City of Albuquerque and among its individual institutions. 

The racial inequities that have rusted to a halt the gears of our society and scorched the fabrics of civility have done so in the form of these intentionally built disparities which have resulted in death, violence, wage-loss and poor health, lack of opportunity for our communities for far too long.

As we watch this nation change and advance on its most enlightened interests we must also align ourselves with these national efforts in order to truly allow those who have been historically disenfranchised to uplift ourselves through self determination. I expect to see these changes reach every level of Government through the efforts of today's youth, beyond my own efforts.

Please take this opportunity to find where each of these demands best fit to be applied within your own institution and this group of constituents can more easily apply pressure as The People.

Attached are the demands we seek with readiness to move forward. It is important that we operate with understanding of not only a many-sided and shared history but a shared future as well.

We look forward to our future meetings and working together

Autumn Chacon

.............

In alignment with national efforts we have adopted some action items from https://culturalnewdeal.com/ which can be further investigated through this link.

In addition to adhering to our demands it is important that you familiarize yourselves with the following language provided by the Cultural New Deal.

I. The support, recognition, and prioritization of the leadership of Black people, Indigenous peoples, and people of color.                                             

II. The reversal of long-term inequities in funding, hiring, and resources in the arts and culture sector.                     

III. Investment in arts and cultural ecosystems for Black, Indigenous, and communities of color.                     

IV. Investment in building healthy communities through centering cultural and racial equity.                     

V. Accountability, commitment, and integrity in the pursuit of cultural and racial justice.                      

“We recognize that this nation was founded on stolen land and built by stolen labor. Freeing the land means the return of Indigenous lands. We acknowledge that any work we do in the name of justice and healing of this planet must start with respect and support for Indigenous peoples, their knowledge, and their right to self determination and tribal sovereignty.”

[We] “must be able to tell our stories.”

“To unmake these systems that oppress all of us, we fight for cultural equity, which we define as the condition that all people are fairly resourced in artistic and cultural expression and fairly represented in systems of exhibition, performance, and decision-making — which will lead to a redistribution of cultural power.

Cultural equity and cultural justice are essential for racial justice, which we define as the systematic fair treatment of people of all races that results in equitable opportunities and outcomes for everyone. Racial justice moves us all toward a more vibrant, multiracial democracy that advances the self-determination and the sovereignty of all peoples.

We call for an end to racial and cultural inequity and injustice as Black, Indigenous, Native American, Latinx, Chicanx, Arab, MENASA (Middle Eastern, North African, South Asian), Asian, Pacific Islander, and other people of color.

[abqartworkers]

Our Demands

WE ARE ARTISTS AND ORGANIZERS IN ALBUQUERQUE.

WE CALL FOR MAJOR CHANGE AT THE DEPT OF CULTURAL SERVICES, ESPECIALLY THE ALBUQUERQUE MUSEUM AND PUBLIC ART DIVISIONS:

1. Review the structure of Cultural Services. We (Black, Indigenous, Chicanx, and People of Color) should not be a minority at the table.

• Take a census of the Cultural Services leadership, staff, boards, and commissions to understand the strengths, challenges, and deficits in racial and cultural representation and power.


2. We call for the building of capacity of BIPOC culture:

• We call upon funders, donors, governments and businesses to collaboratively develop and implement community benefit agreements that include investing in, protecting, and sustaining arts and cultural spaces for Black, Indigenous, and communities of color, with BIPOC as decision making participants and involved in processes.

• We call for support for place-based cultural practices directly tied to the inter-generational education of children, both in schools and in community cultural space.

• We call for the preservation of public spaces as protected spaces for civic expression, congregation, and experience.

• We call upon funders, donors, governments, and businesses to divest 
from companies that do not practice cultural and racial equity.

3. We call upon funders, donors, government entities, and businesses to redress severe racial and cultural inequity in funding arts organizations for and by Black, Indigenous, and communities of color.
 

• Fund BIPOC-led and serving organizations : "outreach" and "free tickets" for BIPOC communities is paternalistic. We have the right to make our own art and express our own culture.

4. We call for the Department of Cultural Services to articulate a Cultural Plan.

• Create a Cultural Plan that centers Black, Indigenous, and People of Color artists, as well as Truth, Healing, and People Power. 


• Collect racial and geographic data for public dollars/contracts allocated through cultural services in order to make racial equity in funding tangible and transparent. 
 

• Rewrite or update the mission statement of relevant divisions/institutions to redress racial and cultural inequities.


WE CALL FOR THE FOLLOWING CHANGES SPECIFIC TO THE ABQ MUSEUM AND PUBLIC ART DIVISIONS:

1. We call upon all funders, donors, governments, and culture-industry businesses to establish and be accountable for equity plans, including furthering diversity of professional full-time staff and boards; providing benefits to all levels of staff; implementing required community benefit and anti-racism trainings; paying artists and community members for labor on advisory groups, panels, and other services spent in the community; and specific and ongoing programs and projects targeting BIPOC communities.

• Rewrite or update mission statement to redress racial and cultural inequities.


• Expand and prioritize the equitable hiring and promotion of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, especially at the senior leadership level.

• Require Cultural Equity, White Supremacy Culture, and Anti-Racism training for all Cultural Services staff, boards, and commissions. Anti-oppression training should be reflected and embodied by decision makers and staff at all levels.


• Organize solo exhibitions of local, non-white artists.

• Commit existing funding (UETF, ABQ Public Art, ABQ Museum programs) to commissioning new public art works that center truth, healing, and racial justice with clear plan to commission Black, Indigenous, and people of color artists and prioritize community engagement with BIPOC and low-financial-wealth communities.

• Acquisitions: Native, Black and Chicanx Art should be acquired and prioritized. Contemporary Art should be purchased from Native People not collectors.

• Audit of 10,000 piece collection: Investigate and present findings of Cultural Impact Report. Audit the collection for BIPOC, women, and contemporary Native work.

• A swift and thorough audit of public art work to identify work that glorifies colonizer history and other white/settler colonial narratives and a commitment to decommissioning them.

2. We call for increased accessibility and transformation of boards and commissions. 

• Add stipend and required anti-racism training for board and commission members, to promote equitable inclusion.

• Create transparency about openings and recruitment for boards and commissions.

• Do the work to fill vacant Dep Cultural Services boards and commissions seats with BIPOC people, BIPOC artists and culture bearers.

• Require board and commission members to have background in art, social justice work, or education.

[abqartworkers]

June 18, 2020 Open Letter

Open Letter to Mayor Tim Keller, 

The Board and CEO of the Albuquerque Museum, City of Albuquerque Public Art Urban Enhancement, Division and whomever it may concern,

 My Name is Autumn Chacon, I am a Dine/ Chicana artist, and close friend of Scott Williams, the victim of the near-fatal shooting on Monday evening, who is also an artist. On behalf of our community I would like you to consider how your institution can adhere to the demands of this ongoing national demonstration that shows systemic and institutional racism cannot be ended with the simple removal of glorified oppressive figures. A monument of Juan De Oñate, as well as many other monuments across the nation, are being removed because of the oppressive and deadly values they embody. In a civilized world, these monuments are inappropriate at best. These statues are meant to trigger historic trauma in living populations, in this region and everywhere. We commend your effort to remove them. However, the nation and this community still demands not only police accountability, but that the core of all civic institutions be accountable to their structural flaws, borne of genocide, that advantage whiteness over any other race or culture; Including the Albuquerque Museum. These intentionally built disparities result in death, violence, wage-loss and poor health, among many other ills that ravage our communities.

Scott Williams, who is white, placed his body and life in defense of these demands for structural accountability. What I and hundreds of local protestors and live online viewers saw was that need for accountability met with malicious hate and violence; people’s civil rights being weighed and then tossed aside; tolerance by Albuquerque police for armed hateful individuals to carry out a shooting before intervening; and intolerance for peaceful demands for social change, like this letter.

Please ask yourself: How does this reflect on your institution, which was the stage in this moment of gross, nearly fatal injustice and disenlightenment?

Many of the protesters at the Albuquerque Museum on Monday, June 15, are Albuquerque's artists, writers and educators, who always carry the burden of explaining the atrocities in our shared and collective history, one usually told from only a Euro-American perspective. Educational institutions of any kind must not project and advance violence onto a living student's mind. This is oppressive to that student. We ask you to thoroughly review how the Albuquerque Museum curates and displays a many-sided history that we all share. Ask yourself: Who benefits and who suffers from the structures of your institution and then adjust to abolish those structural flaws without delay.

It is unconscionable that suggesting this has been met with blind force and the blood of many across the nation, and at your doorstep.      

We thank you in advance for a public, civic exchange and look forward to your reply.

Autumn Chacon, Artist, Albuquerque New Mexico

Scott Daniel Williams, Artist, Albuquerque New Mexico

Nanibah Chacon Artist/ educator, Albuquerque New Mexico

> See the rest of the signatories