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setembro 22, 2020
The Hard-Hit Arts Sector Is Facing a Brain Drain as Ambitious Workers Seek Greener Pastures by Zachary Small, Artnet News
The Hard-Hit Arts Sector Is Facing a Brain Drain as Ambitious Workers Seek Greener Pastures
Matéria de Zachary Small originalmente publicada no site Artnet News em 15 de setembro de 2020.
Dissatisfied cultural workers are leaving the field in droves—and museums may pay the price.
Ed Rodley had prepared to say goodbye—just not this way.
After more than three decades of continuous employment in cultural institutions across Massachusetts, the 56-year-old digital-media producer found himself among the dozens of employees laid off from the Peabody Essex Museum in June. The coronavirus pandemic had expedited a restructuring effort already underway there, deepening cuts to longtime workers.
Around the same time, Andrea Montiel de Shuman, 32, was tendering her resignation at the Detroit Institute of Arts. After nearly five years as the organization’s digital-experience designer, she had started experiencing what she described as “museum paralysis.”
Montiel de Shuman felt trapped under a leadership that she says belittled her expertise and disenfranchised other employees. Meanwhile, colleagues who had departed the industry were thriving with significant growth opportunities and comparably meaty salaries. Covid-19 simply affirmed that it was time to leave the museum.
Outside London, Lucy Charlotte came to a similar conclusion. Despite two years of front-of-house museum work at Tate, plus two more at the English Heritage nonprofit, and a recently earned graduate degree in art history, nearly 30 applications over an 18-month period came up short without so much as an interview offer. And then there was the pandemic.
“I started thinking about the future,” Charlotte, 25, explained. “How long can I wait around for an art job that will never happen?” She decided to exit the field entirely and become a midwife.
Jobs Are Going, Going, Gone
Scenes like these have unfolded all summer long as the lasting impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on the arts sector have come into view. And with veterans and newcomers alike abandoning an industry struggling to confront racial and economic inequities, experts worry that the entire field will soon experience catastrophic losses of talent and institutional knowledge. Others claim that the brain drain is already here.
“Right now, there is a tremendous loss of faith among people who gave everything to museums,” said Tom Eccles, director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. “The furloughs and the layoffs had a terrible psychic effect on people in our industry.”
The American Alliance of Museums has also identified the issue. “The pandemic continues to illuminate the inequities in our society,” a spokesperson told Artnet News, adding that the organization is especially concerned that “people of color are disproportionately affected by furloughs and layoffs.”
Stories of departure from the field are putting names and faces to the onslaught of worrying statistics released this summer on the creative economy’s health. One report, published by the Washington, DC-based Brookings Institution, estimated that between April 1 and July 31, the fine and performing arts sectors have lost 1.4 million jobs and $42.5 billion in sales.
Another report, prepared for New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs by Southern Methodist University, found that nearly 15,000 workers have been laid off or furloughed from 810 cultural organizations in the city over the course of just two weeks in April and May. The latest edition of the UBS Global Art Market Report, meanwhile, estimates that with gallery sales decreasing by nearly 36 percent, more dealers may shutter their brick-and-mortar stores.
“At the moment, the arts industry is being decimated both creatively and economically because the necessary infrastructure needed to support talent is crumbling,” said Michael L. Royce, the director of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). “With that said, the sector will come back, and we have a moral responsibility to address racial inequality within the entire arts complex now to ensure that it returns with a stronger and more grounded focus.”
One indicator of how economic forces are playing out in the art world is NYFA’s job board, a widely used resourced for anyone looking for employment in the industry. Over the past six months, the foundation has seen a 59 percent decrease in job listings compared to the same time period last year.
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
There is reason to believe that many of the losses will be permanent. Researchers at the University of Chicago have published an analysis on pandemic-era layoffs, estimating that 42 percent of layoffs will result in permanent job losses.
Budget shortfalls have resulted in a regression of priorities in many museums, where once-growing fields like digital media and education are being targeted for cuts. “Museums are shedding staff and the brain drain is just immeasurable,” Rodley said. “It’s almost like the clock is ticking backwards on the evolution of museums. Everything that’s happened since the 1950s has been sloughed off.”
Two weeks ago, Paul Schmelzer was among the employees terminated at the Walker Art Center, where he led the museum’s award-winning online magazine, Walker Reader, for almost a decade.
“I was stunned,” Schmelzer said. “I spent the last week being numb because I had put my personal values and passion into my job.”
Museum director Mary Ceruti said that layoffs were part of a restructuring effort underway before Covid-19.
“It’s not unusual for a new director to change priorities and develop new approaches,” she told Artnet News in an interview, saying that the Walker Reader was currently on pause as her team was reconsidering what form it could take in the future.
“Museums are being challenged at every step of the way,” she added. “But how are museums ever going to change if everybody in museums stays?”
Nevertheless, some worry about the precedent of such decisions on the museum workforce. “What Mary Ceruti is doing there is disrespectful to the institution,” the art critic Tyler Green, who has been following the situation at the museum, said. “Why would anyone in the industry think they have job security when something like this happens to someone as prominent as Paul?”
“So Much Talent is Wasted”
According to Eccles, the costs associated with losing valuable sources of institutional knowledge are immense. Not only will museums become less efficient, but he estimates that operational costs will jump by nearly 50 percent to train new employees.
“It’s going to take some years before we get back to where we were before,” he said.
But the industry tremors that have accompanied Covid-19 are only part of a larger trend of dissatisfaction among the sector’s employees. Over the past year, museum employees across the country have spearheaded unionization efforts and started to informally organize advocacy groups around salary transparency, equity, and inclusion. But amid the pandemic, optimism about whether museums can adequately evolve and welcome employees who are not uniformly white and wealthy has dwindled.
“Diversity means nothing when there are no equitable practices and intentional acknowledgements of what actually happens in decision-making,” Montiel de Shuman said. “More people need to speak up, but I have no right whatsoever to ask someone to go through the sacrifices that I know it takes to be in this field.”
The vanishing allure of working in the arts will be a challenge for museums when they emerge from the pandemic and begin hiring again. With so many professionals exiting the field and graduate programs taking a hiatus, recruiting practices for the once-competitive world of cultural institutions may have to change.
“So much talent and passion is wasted,” said Charlotte, who has already seen the vast majority of her classmates from the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she received her bachelor’s degree, leave the field. She estimated that only about five peers are still working in the arts, from a cohort of nearly 50 students. After failing to secure an internship, one friend eventually abandoned her dreams of museum work for life as a cheesemaker.
“The people who get to stay in the art world are those who can afford to work for nothing,” Charlotte says. “The pandemic was just the final straw.”
‘We’re Constantly Both Dancing and Fighting’: Keyna Eleison on Decolonizing Brazilian Institutions by Fernanda Brenner and Keyna Eleison, Frieze
‘We’re Constantly Both Dancing and Fighting’: Keyna Eleison on Decolonizing Brazilian Institutions
Entrevista de Fernanda Brenner com Keyna Eleison originalmente publicada no site da Frieze em 18 de setembro de 2020.
The new co-artistic director of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro discusses her Afro-centred curatorial practice, the importance of translation, and writing as a form of dance
Fernanda Brenner: Your bio mentions your heritage as a griot and shaman in addition to your professional credentials. Is there a parallel between the figure of the griot and the curator, in the sense that they are both guardians and mediators of cultural heritage, as well as agents of interchange between different people and contexts?
Keyna Eleison: I use the terms shaman and griot as a way of messing around with the way my work was instantly feminized and racialized by others when I first started working professionally as a curator. I introduced the idea of the griot and the shaman as an attempt to add a layer of humour to that experience. When I use shaman – a term derived from European anthropology – I am also talking about an indigenous heritage that has been incorporated by European epistemology. I place myself alongside people who hold and propagate languages and bodies of knowledge that cover multiple generations and backgrounds. As a body, I am constantly translating and being translated, and this state of being in translation also relates to the colonized body.
My generation did not have access to Afro-centred knowledge in school or university. Now, curricula have been changing, particularly after the introduction of quota policies in 2012, which led to a significant increase in the number of Black people in public universities in Brazil, but back then it was struggle to access Afro-centred thought and practices. My personal research was already pointing in that direction, but my education was very focused on European values and on the autonomy of art as a discipline. By defining myself as a griot and a shaman, I am aligning myself with different intellectual frameworks, levelling them with the knowledge I acquired in formal training.
FB: Your identity as a Black Brazilian woman is a constant marker and you are often perceived as a spokesperson for a specific context or kind of artistic production. Could you tell me about the strategies you use to present your work and ideas in all their complexity, which we will now be able to follow at Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM), where you have just been appointed artistic director?
KE: People look at me and automatically see someone who understands Afro-diasporic art, sometimes in a stereotypical way, but I have used this to my advantage. Rather than feel offended or resentful, I understand this language and freely incorporate it into other research repertoires. Nothing is ever just one thing. Look, even though we are going through an extremely difficult political moment in Brazil, where reactionary forces have gained strong momentum, one of the biggest museums in the country will be led not only by a duo, but by a man and a woman, and the woman is Black. This fact reflects a strong social desire to widen the upper reaches of cultural institutions.
FB: I think it is important to highlight that your selection was based on an open and transparent application process, which brought together a diverse and specialized group of experts in the Brazilian visual arts. The format, which is still very rare in Brazil, should be celebrated as institutional policy. What was it like applying with Pablo Lafuente, and what was your original motivation to share the position?
KE: We need to shake the foundations from time to time in order to have more diversity at all levels of an institution. With regards to the selection process at MAM, the museum’s new management was already very open to listening. They are keen to rethink the presence of the museum in the city and its link to the public. When the open call was announced, lots of people messaged me suggesting that I apply. One of these messages came from Pablo. I was, and still am, working towards eliminating solitary elements of heroism from my practice. In the last few years I have been prioritising collective efforts, drawing on my research into Afro-centred practices, in which working together is fundamental for survival, just as it is in Indigenous cultures. Pablo is someone I admire both personally and professionally, and we have a long history of collaboration. We then began to think about how to write the proposal together, but remotely, due to the pandemic; the first time we met in person was on our first day as co-directors.
FB: Can you tell me more about the proposal you presented to the museum?
KE: When MAM was founded in 1948, it was aimed at building a future based on modernist ideals of emancipation and the defence of individual subjectivities, closely linked to a belief in the fundamental role of art and culture as tools in this process. With this in mind, we took into account not only the museum collection but also its expanded space that includes the adjoining Flamengo Park. The surroundings and the people who use the grounds are part of the institution: you arrive at MAM the moment you step into the park and you are in the park the moment you enter the museum. We are incorporating people, bodies, names and intellects that were outside the programme. Modernity can only emancipate if it is conceived as a project of diversification.
FB: How do you intend to articulate the museum’s collection?
KE: Something that will feature quite frequently in the programme is the idea of ‘listening’, which I see as a radical exercise. Nowadays, a diverse museum must also mean a sustainable museum, and I see the pursuit of sustainability ultimately as a process of healing. It means acting with respect for the environment in order to guarantee continuity. It is not a synonym for permanence, as there is a constant need to change, to recover and to adapt.
FB: This discussion is part of an active deprogramming of ideas and concepts that stem from the history of colonial violence. There is still an asymmetry between decolonial thought from a more discursive, academic viewpoint and decolonial practices within institutions. How do you see this imbalance?
KE: It’s very important that we actively dismantle hierarchies, although total horizontality is not yet an option. It is key to see feminized bodies in positions of power. An institution is smarter when it has a more diverse team. The greater range of perspectives we include, the more we can overcome the limitations of our knowledge and communication. And when we apply the term ‘decolonial’ to our work – which is a European term – we must maintain a good sense of humour and listen to each other, so we can avoid self-indulgent or flippant perspectives regarding the complex effects of colonization.
FB: Major social, political or artistic change almost always starts with a change in language. Each word we use is tied to layers of history and sometimes loaded with violent processes we are not aware of. The way we use words matters as much as their meaning. The written word is a key element of your practice, too.
KE: Yes, I am indeed interested in matters of language and idiomatic racism. We are slowly becoming aware of the violence of commonplace words: ‘universal’, ‘normality’, ‘discovery’, ‘clarity’, ‘undeveloped’ … I studied philosophy and have recently been considering not only the meaning but the origin of such words, and am always trying to find alternatives that are less loaded with violence. I believe this constant exercise can trigger a very productive discomfort. I also have been studying a non-European language. I am good with languages but I only speak European languages.
FB: Which language is that?
KE: Xhosa, a South African language with click consonants. It has three different clicks performed by the throat. In order to speak it, your body and voice must perform differently. Since I am a body in translation, I believe that learning another language is also a way of expanding my own frontiers and bodies of knowledge. Going back to your question about writing, I often write as a way of dissolving classifications, the same way I try to dissolve dichotomies in my curatorial practice. I see writing as a physical exercise that gives me a firmer footing in my curatorial work and enables me to dance, or help other people to move their hips more fluidly, if needed. In that sense, I am very much interested in the concept of ginga, a word that literally means to rock back and forth in capoeira but that encompasses a whole quality of movement and attitude. The ginga performed by Brazilian bodies is simultaneously a dance and a fight, yet at the same time cannot be defined as either.
FB: You’re a member of 0101, a platform dedicated to rethinking the way institutions construct and manage contemporary art collections by drawing on African and Afro-diasporic practices. Can you tell us more about the project, which includes the sale of artworks, educational courses and artist residencies?
KE: 0101 consists of a group of people striving to bring Afro-centred practices to the art market. 0101 is the date that marks the end of the Haitian Revolution (1 January 1804). I think it is interesting to take the endpoint of a revolutionary process to think about creating dynamics that are still to a certain extent revolutionary. The platform seeks to create the conditions for Black artists and curators to make a living out of their practices and also pursues new forms of equalization across multiple professional contexts.
FB: In Brazil, under the current and former right-wing administrations, cultural policies that were already substandard have been politicized and actively dismantled. How will this impact your day-to-day work in the museum and the way the content you generate will be received by the public?
KE: It is extremely important for museum staff to think of ourselves as a collective, bringing together our personal experiences in political engagement. MAM’s executive director Fabio Schwarczwald has a long history of resistance, including his role at Parque Lage, where he fought hard to host the 2018 exhibition ‘Queer Museum’, which had been censored in Porto Alegre. He appointed Lucimara Letelier as institutional director; MAM’s leadership now consists of four people who are constantly thinking of ways to bring together processes that can keep us afloat. We want to do a lot of things, but we are very aware of our position in Rio de Janeiro in 2020, amidst convergent political, economic and now public health crises. Our work will demand a massive dose of humour, a lot of vitality and ginga. We’ll constantly be both dancing and fighting.
FERNANDA BRENNER
Fernanda Brenner is the founder and Artistic Director of Pivô, an independent non-profit art space in São Paulo, and a contributing editor of frieze.
KEYNA ELEISON
Keyna Eleison is a curator, writer, researcher, heiress griot and shaman, narrator, singer and ancient chronicler. She is a regular contributor to Contemporary&, Professor of the Free Learning Program at Parque Lage School of Visual Arts, Rio de Janeiro and co-Artistic Director of the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro with Pablo Lafuente. She lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.