Following the 2020 murder of George Floyd and theglobal reckoningwith racism that followed,Northern California museums, like other legacy institutions, rushed to affirm their commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessin their workplaces and programming. More than two years later, have those pledges turned into action and results?
DEIA progress is notoriously difficult to track. If peopleof color are hired, are they tasked with more work than their white counterparts? Are official complaints of microaggressions a symptom of a toxic work culture or an indicator that employees feel safe and trust the system?
Across the institutions that spoke with The Chronicle, it was clear that there arestill issues around DEIA that need to be amplified or resolved. Many officials interviewed struggled even to define diversity, equity, inclusion and access in specific terms or at all in one case. But common across the museums queried arestrategic plans, the presence of consultants, invited speakers, revised wall texts, andnew or expanded positions in human resource departments focused on ensuring a just workplace culture and providing a place for employees to bring DEIA complaints.All also offer multilingual materials and some form of free admission to certain populations.
Themeasures taken so far will probably improve some things, but it’s unclear if they will change the status quo. Most trainings, reading groups and talks by outside speakers, for instance, remain optional, raising questions of whether they reach those resistant to DEIA. And, as of this writing, masks aren’t required in any of the museums, whichinhibits accessfor the immunocompromised and people avoiding the coronavirus.
More significant — and riskier — structural change doesn’t appear to be on the table at this time.
Fine Arts Museum of San FranciscoDirector Thomas Campbell, who oversees the Legion of Honor and de Young Museum, predicts it “may take decades before our successors can feel that we’ve achieved the goals we’re setting out for now.” In the meantime, here is a look at steps taken by five museums in the region.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
In January 2020, SFMOMA hired Davida Lindsay-Bell as its chief people and inclusion officer.She oversees the museum’s director of employee experience and internal communications as well as a director of diversity, inclusion and belonging, two new roles currently filled by Annie Jizmagian and Erin Ching, respectively.
After the deletion of acritical Instagram commentfrom a former Black employee caused public uproar during what Lindsay-Bell termed the “eye-opening” summer of 2020, she says SFMOMA began “trying to be far more intentional in how accessible we are to the broader audiences in the S.F. Bay Area,” a sentiment echoed by new directorChristopher Bedford.
Lindsay-Bell, who previously served in various HR roles at the DrPepper, Kaiser Permanente Imperfect Foods, has worked to create equitable hiring practices and “multiple channels for people to report up” at SFMOMA. Internal promotions are a priority. Last year, Lindsay-Bell said, 30% of staff were promoted. There are no figures available for previous years.
Since 2020, SFMOMA has published apublic dashboardtracking what it considers quantifiable diversity. In its 2019-20 fiscal year, for example, the percentage of works it purchased made by artists of color totaled 34%. In 2020-21, it determined that just over 37% of acquisitions both purchased and gifted were made by artists of color. (Disparate record keeping across the years prevents direct comparison.)
The progress in 2019was due in part due to the museum’s decision for thedeaccession and sale of Mark Rothko’s “Untitled” (1960), a practice that has been controversial because it is often at odds with a museum’s charge to care for and preserve a collection. SFMOMA purchased 11 works by artists including Barry McGee, a San Francisco-based artist in the Mission School art movement; AnishinaabekweCanadian artist Rebecca Belmore; and Mickalene Thomas, a contemporary queer Black artist, as a result of that $50.1 million sale.
Like many of the museums surveyed, SFMOMA provides visitor material in multiple languages. Gallery wall texts for “Diego Rivera’s” America are offered in Spanish and English.
Crocker Art Museum
Since theSacramento museum apologizedfor an ill-consideredInstagram postof a gray square that was interpreted as neutral when others were posting black squares in support of Black Lives Matter during the summer of 2020, it has expanded the duties of its director of human resources to include diversity, equity and inclusion concerns. The position is supposed to “keep an overall view of what we’re doing in that area,” according to Kat Haro, the Crocker’s director of marketing and communications.
But Haro added, “No single entity is responsible for tracking” DEI. Measuring progress, she said, is “something we’re figuring out internally.”
一些DEI-inspired行动包括提供alt text (descriptions of images for the visually impaired) on Instagram posts; deciding to acknowledge Thanksgiving as a potentially controversial holiday; and integrating DEI-focused questions into decisionmaking at staff meetings.
Since 2020, donors have stepped up by spontaneously gifting works from a more diverse range of artists to the Crocker. Donations included artworks by noted celebrated African American artists Thornton Dial, Charles Gaines and Mickalene Thomas.
Asian Art Museum
Following the adoption of aRacial Equity Action Planin December 2020, the museum hired Julia Li, who has an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and previously worked as thehead of social impact & DEI programs at Thumbtack, in Januaryas its first director of belonging and inclusion.
Li has prioritized what she calls “staff psychological safety,” launching a DEIA council and formalizing affinity groups among employees (also known asemployee resource groups, or ERGs). Affinity groups, organized for employees who share a common race or sexual orientation, can offer a supportive forum.
For patrons, Zac Rose, the museum’s associate director of communications, mentioned new accessibility improvements such as closed captions on various museum-produced videos and video tours done in American Sign Language. The museum also has increased the size of the texts on much of its signage and placed wall labels accompanying works of art at a height better visible to wheelchair users.
San Jose Museum of Art
Director Susan Sayre Batton, impressed with DEI efforts she’d seen already in place at other museums, prioritized diversity work when she began at SJMA in 2017.
An Equity Task Force of 10 members was formed in 2018 and invited facilitators from Race Forward, a national organization with an office in Oakland that seeks to advance racial justice with training sessions, tool kits and research. Race Forward helped the museum produce an equity statement, a document that sets out the institution’s commitment to correcting inequalities.
Batton identifies “one of our biggest learnings” from racial equity training as having “measurable and immeasurable commitments.” Integration of values into an institution can be difficult to assess, but Natalie Sanchez, chair of the Equity Task Force, who was appointed to the compensated position as a junior staff member, feels that feedback is well received among the museum’s staff and that opportunities for employees of color have increased.
The museum’s dedication to diversity and representation extends to exhibitions as well. A2020 pledgecommitted “to presenting a minimum of 60% artists of color and women each year,” but SJMA had already established a practice of consistently exhibiting a diverse range of artists.
In an effort to increase access for its surrounding communities, SJMA displays labels and wall texts in San Jose’s three official languages: English, Spanish and Vietnamese. And thanks to support from the Yellow Chair Foundation, the museum offers year-round free admission to children, students and teachers.
旧金山艺术博物馆
FAMSF rewrote its strategic planto elevate DEIA following the racial reckoning that grew out of the George Floyd protests.
“Even those of us who thought we were progressive realized the degree to which our institutions were, to an extent, part of a problem,” acknowledged FAMSF Director Thomas Campbell.
To that end, FAMSF created the position of manager of diversity and inclusion, currently filled byCourtney Jones, as part of its pledge to become an anti-racist institution. It also initiated the new position of director of interpretation, hiringAbram Jackson.
Jackson began consulting for FAMSF when two of his Bay School students recommended his historical and ethnic studies expertise to their mother, Frances Homan Jue, the audio tour producer of the 2019 exhibit “Soul of a Nation.”
In spring of 2021, FAMSF created the interpretation position within its education department; Jackson was hired by that winter.
“Speaking very generally, American museums were built by and funded by white patrons,” said Campbell. “They predominantly collected and displayed works by white artists initially for white audiences.”
Jackson,who officially started his FAMSF job in June 2022, said his role aims to correct that historic bias by offering a DEIA perspective from the time ideas for an exhibition are first formed through the development of interpretive materials.He also works with the museums’ permanent collection displays.
For select exhibits such as its Frida Kahlo show at the de Young in 2020-2021, FAMSF has provided Spanish and English labels and wall texts. FAMSF also offers free general admission to residents of the nine Bay Area counties on Saturdays, which has increased attendance by 149% since the program began in April 2019.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include more information about San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s new roles and its efforts, since 2019, to diversify its collections. It also clarified details about the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco’s director of interpretation position.