I canât get over the statement released this week by leaders of some of the worldâs biggest museums â British Museum, Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, you name it â opposing the recent wave of climate protests targeting major works of art. In their open letter, they said they were âdeeply shakenâ by the recent protests, warning that the activists âseverely underestimate the fragility of these irreplaceable objects, which must be preserved as part of our world cultural heritage.â Iâll explain why I think this embarrassing statement is a resounding failure of leadership. Â
But first of all, âdeeply shakenâ? Do you need a hug, museum directors? Whatâs more âfragileâ â the artwork or you? And whereâs that sensitivity when you accept donations from opioid manufacturers, fossil fuel lords, war profiteers, and the like? You know that your boardrooms are the biggest laundromats of ill-begotten money. Furthermore, why arenât you âdeeply shakenâ by the systemic racism, sexism, and classism in your institutions? Why donât your delicate hearts quiver when you hear from your workers that theyâre struggling to make ends meet?
Itâs worth reminding the signatories that young protesters gluing themselves to or splashing food at glass-protected artworks are not a danger to society. Theyâre not anti-art saboteurs but rather media-savvy people who are aware of the power of spectacle. If anything, this statement proves that their new tactic is working.
The bigger problem here is that these museum directors have a severely narrow understanding of their positions. In their own words, the museumâs primary responsibility lies in âcollecting, researching, sharing and preservingâ cultural heritage. No, we need you to do more than that. We need museum directors to become actual cultural leaders who know how to identify and address societyâs most pressing problems, and actively engage in solving them. Iâm calling on you to stop thinking like caretakers and start acting like changemakers. Start representing your community, not just your board of trustees.
Iâll give some examples of how to achieve that: Lead the conversation on repatriation, instead of just waiting for the authorities to knock on your door; build your programming around examining the colonial provenance of your collections; kick the toxic billionaires out; reinvent the use of your endowment; help foster a new generation of cultural workers from overlooked communities; open your doors to protests instead of fearing them. In fact, you should be leading these protests.
Maybe that would turn your institution from target to ally.
Before anyone glues themselves to an art work, folks might want to check this exhibition out.
https://cmcanow.org/virtual-tours/
It looks at climate change and our environment from the perspective of 4 living artists. Sometimes you can learn more from museums than you think you already knowâŚAnd, yes, maybe hug a museum director that does stuff like this.