decolonizeourmuseums

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DEBUNKING + DENOUNCING RACIST ICONOGRAPHY TOLERATED IN PUBLIC OFFICE

OPEN LETTER to Malden City Council and City Councils Nationwide Still Tolerating this Nonsense >>> Asking for Removal and Resignation of Malden Ward 8 City Councillor Sica-Bernbaum

ASIAN LIVES ARE NOT A JOKING MATTER. It’s 2021. How is it STILL innocent for City Officials to Dress Racist?

We at Decolonize Our Museums also released a statement this morning demanding that Ward 8 Malden City Councillor Sica-Bernbaum be removed or resign. She needs to be held responsible for performing a racist Halloween tableau that aggravates anti-Asian sentiment that remains peaked in continued pandemic.

We all know it is a tinderbox moment and firmly believe it is important to block any open flouting of hate. It is brewing against all communities of color and now even white comrades.

We ask you to read this letter we have drafted in support of Asian community members in Malden advocating for her removal. We join both Greater Malden Asian American Community Coalition + Naacp Mystic Valley Branch / Mystic Valley Area NAACP in their efforts advocacy for zero tolerance for racist electeds in public office.

If you're active on instagram @ decolonizeMuseums or twitter @ decolonizeOM, please follow our handles and lift up with the following hashtags #stopAsianHate

#whoRepresentsUs

#theWaterWeDrink #theImagesThatGroom #mediaWeConsume

#whatTheory #criticalRaceReality

Further, we would appreciate if you can email or call Malden City Council asking for Councillor Sica's removal or resignation (detailed call to action left margin of linked letter.

More soon.

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TELL 'EM ! WE DON'T NEED THESE MONUMENTS TO TEACH PEOPLE CRITICAL RACE THEORY N HISTORIES WE DONT NEED THESE MONUMENTS WE DONT NEED THEIR GOD GOLD NOR GLORY Join us at the Boston Art Commission’s live meeting 4-6 as they accept public testimony. The Emancipation Group racist statue is coming down, and they plan to place it elsewhere with “context” to explain...well, we’re not sure what, yet. Requiring BIPOC ppl to bare their trauma, to prove why they’re deserving to walk around public parks without institutions throwing racist violence at them in the form of monuments and “public art” maintained by the City—this is institutionalized racism. Please know that we see that it’s violent. If you’re prepared to make a statement, please do so: and let us know! We'd love to share it on this platform. Zoom link to the meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87026818307 Meeting agenda: https://www.boston.gov/public-notices/13658571 Link to the 2018 monument report, and in two years they got almost no traction until Public Artists took to the streets: https://drive.google.com/.../1CFilkNAFK125S.../view Image description: beheaded Columbus statue upside down over text: "Vandalism of violent supremacist monuments IS Public Art [It is the highest form of public art. It is inherently creative] Food-and-housing-insecure surveilled constituents on the street doing popular education risking incarceration IS Public Art Caretaking marginalized communities—creativity unrecognized, uncompensated, and at great cost of daily violence—IS Public Art Public Art hosted by the City is therefore inherently a cooptive way to contain community actions considered disruptive by the State"

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Managed to bring back changing labels and honest acknowledgements with respect to acquisition histories - one of our main demands from 4 years back. Back. . . NOTE: second to last slide borrowed from @sonyareneetaylor yup !!! . Decolonize Our Museums note took MFA's Diversity and Inclusion listening panel (in place for a couple months) facilitated by their first Black higher staff hire Makeeba McCreary for local artists of color (mostly longtimers attended) . I kept quiet for most of it. Then when they were requesting feedback, as it was brought up a couple times that their latest incident with young visiting students of color is key in moving forwards, I connected that the real history of museums was to have a place for the wealthy to store their immense hoarding of stolen cultures and remains from places they colonize and setting it up with curation to justify their deeds. That given the museum itself was build likely by ill-compensated labor of newly freed Black folx (DOM will look into whether there were iterations of the MFA before 1876) and the connection between Black bodies as property land as property and people and their items "conquered" as property, how can it come as any surprise that an institute that will not acknowledge these fundamental truths - with their own Director recorded on film saying that "white supremacy is mischievous" - will ever come to terms with policing Black and brown bodies, children or otherwise. Their (stolen hoarded) property has the highest sanctions. Over any living person. . . Land acknowledgements are not enough but certainly a first step. Y'll these beautiful buildings can be community spaces once all the stolen cultural objects returned - perhaps to tell our real histories - histories communities most marginalized have been preserving for generations - despite interruptions and through living culture - right outside these walls #whatsartequity #supportcommunitycuration #decolonizeourmuseums

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#whatsartequity facing housing insecurity? overwhelmed by unlivable wages? Artists on your roster facing housing insecurity? and/or growing up with family legacy in redlined districts? Only way to arts equity is to support local housing and divestment justice efforts. True economic power comes from labor organizing. If that makes you feel some kind of way learn some labor history and undo the poisonous myths you've been taught growing up in unredlined zones - grants are designed to support myth of meritocracy #nosuchthing #aes19 #right2remain #righttothecity #divestboston . . This infographic depicts how middle managerial class fits into and supports the violent pipelines we are so accustomed to seeing represented #theotherhalf #designedtobeinvisible to #eraseaccountability #whosmanagingwho #whoissolvent #whoismadetobelievetheyaresolvent #whosebootswelicking #howwefeedtheonepercent #nowweknow #fuckredlining didn't grow up redlined? We got a lot of work to do. Period. #dobetter #dontparticipateingentrification #dontparticipateingenocide #dontparticipateincolonization #makenomistakethatredlinecanbemovedanytime #supportcommunitycuration . . image is half baked possibly not totally accurate but i could not find the other half represented visually so i made this to better understand the sources I've been sitting with #visuallearner if you have insight let's chat and make a better graphic . . . Many thanks to the many caring people supporting this work #weinvestinliberation . . When we experience new ideas, let's be sure to credit the people we hear it from. Each and every time. Acknowledgement is how we make people meaningful to our growth and in our lives.

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Featuring the work of this amazing panel of culture workers at Arts Equity Summit #AES19 ... aaand facilitating a workshop to continue getting organized, worker artists! #whatsartequity #supportcommunitycuration Sat Mar 23. Thoughts below. More soon. In the mean time tag older posts with #supportcommunitycuration of favorite examples . Title How not to get Chump-Changed: The Artist’s Role in Housing and Divestment Justice #right2remain #divestBoston . Description In this workshop, local culture workers will explore how artists might organize to support housing and divestment justice efforts in ways that fortify and celebrate the neighborhoods that support our resilient arts communities. Working artists are made complicit in gentrifying their own neighborhoods: in exchange for pithy arts funding our "public" works become cosmetic facelifts that hide devastating disparities. We believe that to be truly equitable, we must push this city to meet the needs of the communities battling displacement as a result of decades-long city-sanctioned development initiatives that drive up our cost of living. This workshop aims to explore how we might value our labor and stand together. In valuing each other and understanding the power we leverage, we hold our ground, slow down the predatory forces driving displacement, and redirect resources for more livable futures for ourselves and our neighbors. . Brandie Blaze, panelist Dey Hernández, AgitArte, panelist McKersin, Lakaï Dance Theatre, panelist . . Kimberly Barzola, facilitator Pampi, Decolonize Our Museums, third eye fell + In Divine Company, facilitator . . March is a pivotal month bookended by two summits on equity, one I just attended on curation and one Im arranging a panel for on intersectional arts equity in a few weeks. . . When cultural spaces negotiated by organizations with city support are suddenly pushing conversations on equity it's most likely a cosmetic appeal (value systems and the root motivation often diametrically opposed between state-sanctioned and grassroots folks - people with institutional support always carry the kind of capital power that can quicken situations so their systemic impact greater.

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#Whatsartequity begins

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#supportcommunitycuration begins

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Hotel workers and museum workers are workers Beyond worker solidarity, please also consider that labor justice is historically and deeply connected to the building and maintenance of cultural institutions like museums.

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Fundraising To Attend 100th New England Museum Association Conference

Please support HERE!

Our panel "Power of Protest: When the People Curate" was invited.

As most of us are concerned community members and not museum professionals, we are engaging in a fundraising effort to make sure our beautiful speakers are cared for - meaning their registration, food, transportation and honorarium are covered.

We see this conference as a critical access point for transformative conversation with museum professionals - especially curators- that can foster deeper understanding and identify accountable action: We plan to end the panel with a workshop leading museum professionals who attend into identifying one commitment they can make based on their access to representation and economic liberation.

We are fundraising to cover registration, travel and stipend for each participant

Trip by car (Boston-Stamford) $100 per car

Ticket by Amtrak $92 (2 Round Trip NYC/ Stamford Amtrak), $184

Organizing and workshop development $275

Honorarium $200 per person for 5 people = $1000

Speaker Registration (Early Bird 1 Day w/ lunch) Note: We are applying to NEMA for scholarship to waive registration $145 per person, 6 people = $870

Representation is important. Please help us ensure the people who are insisting Museums be responsible and accountable through protest are at the table. Literally. Please support working artists and low-income culture workers of color.

Session Details SESSION TITLE Protest of Power: When the People Curate - a Panel + Workshop Description Join activists, culture workers, and museum professionals to discuss how to change the power dynamic in traditional museum curation. How has traditional curation reinforced and been rewarded by white supremacy? What is the responsibility of the institutions that benefit from traditional curation and how can they be held accountable? What does an alternate, radical, resistance curation look like? How might we begin doing this immediately as museum professionals? A Panel + Workshop If all goes well, The Whitest Cube will be putting a podcast of the conference together, parts of which will be livestreamed. Date/Time Thursday Nov 8, 2:45-4:15pm Panelists Museum of Impact with Monica Montgomery, Founding Director and Curator Monica Montgomery of the Museum of Impact, the world's first mobile social justice museum, inspiring action at the intersection of art, activism, self and society. Decolonize This Place with Amin Husain, co-founder of Decolonize this Place, a space that is action-oriented around indigenous struggle, black liberation, Free Palestine, global wage workers and de-gentrification. Facilitated by MTL+. Tremendous intersectional actions #decolonizethisplace. The Whitest Cube with Ariana Lee + Palace Shaw, founders of multimedia project including a podcast, launched in June of 2018. We talk about art institutions from the perspective of people of color, with a focus on Boston's art culture. The Whitest Cube podcast hosts conversations about art institutions that feature artists, museum professionals, and people of color in our city. Outside of our podcast, we collaborate with partners to manifest these conversations in physical spaces, including panels, trainings, and events. Facilitators of on-site podcasting. Decolonize Our Museums with Pampi, culture worker and the digital and mixed media performance artist, poet, facilitator, and culture worker at third eye fell. They make work in community in order to share the therapeutic and empowering benefits of the expressive arts to mental health and agency. Pampi is one of the organizers at Decolonize Our Museums, a group of concerned community members in the greater Boston area that have facilitated and contributed to public dialogue and institutional accountability at both the MFA and ICA - garnering international attention. Panel organizer and workshop designer and facilitator.

MANY THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND GENEROSITY

Please support HERE!

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Notes From ICA’s Forum on Institutional Responsibility

Museums say they make no money leaning heavily on individual donors Then WHY when communities protest harmful work can they not apologize? What is the motivation behind such benevolence?

I feel some kind of way about the word literacy In my view visual literacy can be embodied as lived experience Who then are visually illiterate? Why are they illiterate when they have access to every kind of knowledge? Because through institutional sanction of supremacy myths – say… Museums – they can choose to remain so

We cannot make change from the inside without protest Protest and direct action is how we have any chance at institutional change (at Museums) If we have any civil rights it is because people fought and continue to fight for them

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DEAR COMMUNITY:

In the midst of the sheer volume of survival organizing happening of late, we just wanted to thank every person passionately working to help each other's communities. Some of us may be perceiving for the first time what many of us have known: the institutional roots that aggravate, foment and serve state-sanctioned violence against non-elite people compound exponentially on the most vulnerable communities - often unchecked - and if met with resistance, aggressively defended by myths that lean on racist iconography and even violently suppressed.

Some of this understanding comes as people around the nation watch brown and Black athletes #TakeAKnee to denounce state-sanctioned police brutality over the self-righteous decrying political engagement in the world of entertainment that is supposedly apolitical. Perhaps some from the brutally repressed and mocked Black Lives Matter community protests in St. Louis challenging that yet another officer was acquitted of the murder of a Black man. Perhaps the attempted lynching of the biracial boy by white teens in New Hampshire. Perhaps from observing that those aligned with the elite are willing to condemn those with U.S passports and zero congressional representation to a humanitarian crisis of devastating proportions by virtue of supposed debtedness. In all of this, what emerges is the hubris and scornful behavior of the oldest colonizing empires who measure a peoples’ worth at point of gun for gold, god and glory - motivations that continue to be validated through the institutional practice of othering by brutal violence.

(And so quietly we lock up children and adults disproportionately brown and black nearly all incredibly poor: these incarcerated people - they shovel snow off the tracks in Boston, fight fires in California, and clean up from hurricanes in Florida on no pay).

In midst of witnessing such (expected) breach in state action towards people they technically should be accountable to (the myth of social contact), we write to update you on our call for institutional responsibility at the ICA/Boston regarding the erasure of Black critique in the continued promotion of artist Dana Schutz without addressing community concerns that her problematic paintings dehumanizing Black people have not been adequately nor respectfully reconciled by her hosting institutions (Background below).

We believe resisting ongoing contemporary examples of colonialism is crucial to disrupting white supremacy in this country, and we must resist on multiple fronts. We see this conversation as a necessary one to both channel resources to Black organizing and culture work and to challenge the continued dehumanization and capitalization of Black trauma by white institutions. Our campaign is deliberately trying to face the communities and not the institution. We are determined to have continued conversation with our communities as we build capacity. We have been moving slowly as we recognize this campaign, while important, is nothing new and behemoth in size. We feel it important that our organizers be able to continue doing their direct support work in community and feel supported doing so as they keeping this conversation going.

We mean to faithfully continue, quietly and surely.

RECAP OF SEPT 14 CURATOR TALK AT ICA/BOSTON

A few of us from Decolonize Our Museums attended the curator talk on September 14.

The moderator, poet laureate Danielle Legros Georges, did a beautiful job providing context and pulled quite a few lines from our letter to the ICA. Unsurprisingly, curator Eva Respini regurgitated the tired myths and excuses, including a stubborn insistence on freedom of speech and how that protects artists from accountability. What we find curious is that while at the same time the institution might speak on behalf of an artist, they are not willing to take ownership of the power behind their stances.

Here is an excerpt from some brilliant analysis our team member Dr. Barbara Lewis penned on this very curator talk (the description of Schutz work itself is phenomenal).

UPDATE

Tonight, September 28, a few of us will be showing up at the ICA's forum on institutional responsibility today to collect information for our communities. We hope to highlight the panel taking place at the National Center for Afro-American Artists on institutional accountability for the Roxbury community late October during the Q/A.

At the forum tonight, we plan to center that our concerns are less about artist accountability (though that's certainly a critical step) and more about what it means power-wise when an institution backs such artists.

We perceive artist accountability explicitly as something that cannot be discussed without addressing institutional backing of said artist.

Some of us plan to read lines from the public statement we wrote to our communities in order to debunk the stubborn myths the institution skirts responsibility by leaning on.

In case you can show up today, here is the link to the forum at the ICA on Institutional responsibility (starts at 7pm - tickets first come first serve starting at 5pm).

Holding you and yours all up in light and love.

BACKGROUND

On July 26, The Institution of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opened a solo exhibition of Dana Schutz’s work. Schutz is known for a painting named “Open Casket,” based on the historical photograph of a brutally murdered Black teenager, Emmett Till. Multiple works by Schutz dehumanize Black people, capitalize off of Black trauma, and contain anti-Black stereotypes, for which she has been widely critiqued.

A diverse group of artists, community members, and activists in Greater Boston met with the ICA curator about this exhibit, issued an open letter, and subsequently a public statement. They insist that local museums have an institutional responsibility to marginalized communities. The ICA has painted these protests as “censorship”, a startling normalization of the “free speech” narrative we were able to recognize in the more obvious white supremacist rally.

Decolonize Our Museums (DOM), a group which arose from 2015 protests against cultural appropriation at the MFA, has been revived to support this ongoing protest. Join us in holding the ICA accountable to critique from Black artists and communities.

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Excerpt from “The Color Of Responsibility”

Excerpt from Dr. Barbara Lewis’ reflection post 9/14/2017 curator talk at ICA Boston

Dana Schutz has moved painting forward. So said Eva Respini, curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, during a conversation with Danielle LeGros Georges, Boston’s Poet Laureate, at the ICA on September 14, 2017.

Schutz is a singular artist, Respini said. And Respini, an art historian, has studied and followed Schutz’s work for fifteen years. The artist and curator often talk, in detail, about Schutz’s career and her trajectory as an artist, but Respini does not address her controversial work on racial subjects.

While a revolving display of Schutz’s cartoonish paintings flash on a screen behind the speakers, Georges asks Respini to discuss Schutz’s use of brown figures seemingly distressed and topsy turvy in the water while two oblivious women on land pay them no mind. This painting did not portray the brown figures as dead, autopsied, or distorted in compressed space, having lost all semblance of human anatomy, but Respini answers that Schutz merely portrays what she sees, addressing everyday banalities. In recording the human condition, she is not answerable for any violence she references; and that applies, especially, to the controversial redo, verging on caricature, of Emmett Till’s racially mauled face, the subject of her Whitney Biennial painting, “Open Casket,” which gave Schutz explosive notice.

How accountable is a painter for recognizing the public valences of images they promote? How accountable is the institution that backs them? As I consider these questions, my eye falls on a news item, much repeated these days. A policeman who denied continued life to a publicly despised brown body that was male, one regularly criminalized in the public mind, was determined as absolved of all responsibility. What could possibly connect a painter and a policeman? Each holds in his or her hand the ability to accord with or deny the flow of public will.

Schutz, however, by manipulating, literally, the saga of a legendary brown corpse, created by white male hands, taking unto themselves the privilege and power to police their southern precinct against the presence of a young brown body in 1955, a violent denial of life that dominated the news and remains a milestone of brutality in American history, Schutz included herself inside the limits of public policing as white privilege. She, through her art, draws the connection, unmistakably.

…

So I return to the question of accountability. Who is accountable to whom in the matter of art, especially when the topic being bruited about under the brush or lens of personal creativity traffics in matters of life and death, addressing the pertinent question of whose life matters in the public view.

- Barbara Lewis, Ph.D., Director, William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of African Diaspora and Culture, University of Massachusetts Boston - Member/ Consultant, Decolonize Our Museums

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Keeping things shaking! Returning from Curator Talk at ICA on Schutz exhibition.