By Jamara Wakefield
I was raised by a mother who was determined to give my siblings and I cultural capital and a critical perspective on the world we live in. At home we read books by Black authors, watched films by Black directors, and gathered to watch television shows with Black actors. Our arts and cultural education outside the home included attending festivals, the theater, concerts, protests, and museums of all types. She didn’t teach us that museums were sacred, instead she used them to reaffirm the message we received at home: Black is beautiful and we live in a world that does not believe that.
I remember walking through galleries as she quietly fills in the gaps of euro-centric history with knowledge of the diaspora. She is the one who taught me that Christopher Columbus was a murderer. She drew my attention to the litany of praise offered to statues of white men on horses. She taught us that African and Indigenous people were always dehumanized in museums.
These early conversations were a primer for the discomfort I felt viewing the Dana Schutz’s Open Casket painting of Emmett Till’s remains at the 2017 Whitney Biennial. Schutz is a white woman. White people have a long history of capitalizing on Black suffering in and outside the art world. Those childhood memories with my mother helped me process the out of body-ness I felt attending Kara Walker’s  ‘A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby‘ at the Domino Plant and Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965–2016 where I was bombarded by gawky white tourism. Everytime I visit a curated space I am reminded that museums are not currently designed as safe spaces for me. I want to let my guard down and enjoy art for art-sake. I am envious of those with the privilege to do so. As for me every exhibit and interaction all feels political to my brown body. My adult discomfort in public art spaces is a razor sharp reminder that there is more liberation work to be done in the art world.
De-centering whiteness in arts and cultural institutions is an urgent matter. In 2018, The Mellon Foundation released an Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey. It found that when intersecting gender and race/ethnicity variables, very few men of color are in museum leadership positions. White women comprise 56% of museum leadership positions, white men 33%, POC women 7% and POC men 4%. Although there has been a substantial increase in hiring people of color in the last four years, particularly in curatorial and education departments, museum leadership roles have not made this shift in hiring.
The International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), both have written codes of ethics regarding governance, policies and collection practices. Both explicitly state that the ethics a museum abides by must be continually updated and respond to changes to the public sphere. Alas many museums remain resistant to these changes pledging allegiance to their mission statements which brag about the extensiveness of their collections while remaining mum on how those collections were acquired.
Museums have a long history of acquiring stolen collections. Repatriation, the return of cultural objects or works of art to their country of origin, has been largely unsuccessful because there are few ways to keep museums accountable for their acquisitions. Recently due to organizers and community coalitions speaking out, there has been more dialogue about the ethics of collections and the ethics of institutions receiving “dirty money.†As is the case with the current outrage over The Sackler Family trust.  The Sackler family made their fortune in opioids (estimated by Forbes at $13 billion) through their ownership of Purdue Pharma. After a 2018 lawsuit was filed by the Massachusetts Attorney General, accusing the Sackler family of breaking laws to profit from opiods, public outrage led several museums to reject Sackler family donations. Museums are public institutions. The public’s confidence in their ability to not only act ethically but also align themselves with ethical stakeholders is paramount.
I am constantly asking myself these questions: Why does the decolonization of museums matter? Why do I continue to visit these colonized spaces knowing they rest comfortably in their resistance to change? I see museums as liminal spaces.  The word “liminal†comes from the Latin root, limen, which means “threshold.†The liminal space is the “crossing over†where you have left something behind, yet you are not yet fully in something else. When museums operate in their full liminal potential they are able to tell non-binary histories. For US museums this means acknowledging colonialism, imperialism and white supremacy while also striving towards a decolonialized future.
While I’m not certain all institutions have this potential, I believe art and cultural institutions do because many of their mission statements already lean in this direction—but too often they do not have the internal institutional courage to move from polite social justice talk to radical decolonized action. This is why it is critical that the public continue to apply pressure to power, so institutional leaders do not become complacent or complicit. I stand in the Black radical tradition of hope. I believe it is possible for art institutions to serve as a  zone between the “what was†and “ the next.†What was, is a dark history of colonization and human exploitation. The next, is a decolonized world. It is coming whether the keepers of colonization want it or not.
What would a world look like where our art and culture institutions are our greatest liberation movement allies because they model decolonial practices? Fuck with me on this one—think about it. What if museums were an underground railroad for art and political actions that center Indigenous struggle, Black liberation, and Palestinian self-determination? What if museums operated like a network of sanctuary cities committed to welcoming refugees, asylum seekers and others who are seeking safety? What if museums were openly anti-corporatist and anti-capitalist? What if museums had non-hierarchical organization structures?
As a Black, queer, mother, and woman, it is painful for me to visit institutions that refuse to see me: my history, my body, and the ways I experience violence at the threshold of their entrance ways. Since all US museums are founded on stolen unceded Indigenous land, it is imperative that we decolonize these spaces. Museums must disrupt the “doctrine of discovery.†This was a framework for Christian explorers, in the name of their sovereign, to lay claim to territories uninhabited by Christians. If the lands were vacant, then they could be defined as “discovered†and sovereignty claimed. Within the framework of the doctrine, Indigenous peoples in the Americas were considered non-human and therefore denied their self determination at the will of imperialism, colonization and manifest destiny. To begin a healing process it is critical to counter this myth and acknowledge the stories of the people who resided on the land. If they refuse to decolonize: it is time to burn them down! I don’t want to live in a world where complicit museums exist and wield their power to erase me at the same time.
What if museums refused donations from individuals, families or businesses with ties to crimes of humanity and systemic oppression? What if museums abandoned tokenism? What if museums rejected neoliberalism? What if museums curated histories that debunked the mythologies our Western culture religiously clings to? What if museums did not seek to appease white tourist markets? What if museums fought against gentrification? What if museums did not believe their silence protects them? What if museums actively aligned themselves with community coalition groups? What if museums sought feedback and accountability from community coalition groups? What if museums were able to humbly say “yes we fucked up,†ask “how can we heal?,†ask “how can we have better practices?,†then follow suit!
This is the world I want to live in. Museums could be one of our greatest allies in liberation struggles. They have the physical space, the means, and the public confidence to partake in a large scale social movement against colonial powers. Yet they reject this opportunity over and over again. They prefer to remain silent and hide in a world that desperately needs decolonizing.
I am not alone in imagining this alternate world nor am I the only one exhausted by their connivance. For the last several weeks artists, and organizers have been demanding the removal of Warren B. Kanders—CEO of a company responsible for the manufacturing and marketing of weapons such as the tear gas used against migrant families at the U.S./Mexico border, Water Protectors at Standing Rock, protesters in Ferguson, Oakland, Palestine, Puerto Rico, Egypt—from the board of the Whitney Museum. Kanders needs to step down. The Whitney needs to decolonize.  Period!
Looking back, I realize my mother was preparing me for the future. She offered the somber lesson all children of oppressed people offer. You are beautiful and this world will hate your beauty.  Although I embody the sageness of my mother, I also embody the lucid dreams of Basquiat, Sun Ra, Angela Davis, and Janelle Monae. My friends and I create art with the goal of fucking shit up. My former professor Anna Deveare Smith told us to create art that “scorches the earth.† For my activist, artist, dreamer friends, and all who believe in another world, the one where our lives matter, our histories matter, our liberation matters: be prepared to fight in this world but never stop imagining liberation for our future selves. We owe this moment to our future selves.
Reading Suggestions:
“To Fight Racism Within Museums, They Need To Stop Acting Like They’re Neutral,” Antwaun Sargent, Vice (2018)
“Money, Ethics, Art: Can Museums Police Themselves?,” Holland Cotter, NY Times (2019)
“The 6 Issues That Will Guide the Future of Museums,” Benjamin Sutton, Hyperallergic (2015)
 
Jamara Wakefield is an art and culture writer. She writes for publication and stage. She currently has bylines for Shondaland, Playboy, Very Smart Brothers, Broadway Black, B- Word Magazine and Broadway World.
