SFMOMA Staff Condemn “Racist Censorship” and Institutional Injustice – ARTnews.com

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Current and former employees of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art say a recent wave of layoffs and censorship of a former employee on social media highlight deep structural inequalities in the institution and call for a major change in leadership and an artist boycott.

On Tuesday, a group of former SFMOMA employees published a letter Assisted Taylor Brandon, a black employee in the museum’s communications department who was censored after criticizing the museum management’s response to the police murder of George Floyd. The pointed letter – posted on Instagram and authored with contributions from more than a dozen former workers, including some who have signed nondisclosure agreements – describes Brandon’s experience of “racial censorship” as part of a pattern of discrimination and appeasement at SFMOMA, argues the current one Management of the museum “the knowledge, skills or humanity are lacking to steer the institution into an anti-racist future”.

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The letter takes up earlier demands by the No Neutral Alliance – an organization Brandon founded to hold museums accountable for unfair treatment of black employees, artists and patrons – and continues internal demands of the SFMOMA leadership for compensation Foregoing the most diverse segment of the institution’s workforce after the recent layoffs have severely affected frontline staff. The letter also urges current staff to refuse to work and “boycott all artists to SFMOMA as a gesture of outrage against institutional oppression”.

The former staff group is currently collecting additional reports of discrimination by SFMOMA managers, according to a member who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. A request for comment from ARTnews has not yet been returned to the museum.

Brandon, the museum’s only Black Communications staff member until April, left a comment last month on an SFMOMA Instagram post hinting at recent protests against Black Lives Matter. Brandon called the museum post of a Glenn Ligon work of art a “cop-out” without further comment and wrote that high-ranking museum figures have a history of “using black pain for their own financial gain.” But her comment was soon deleted.

SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra publicly apologized for the removal following reports that SFMOMA’s external relations director Nan Keeton had justified the removal by describing Brandon’s language as threatening. “The decision to limit comments was not in line with our values ​​as a museum,” he wrote in a statement. “I take full responsibility for the museum’s actions.”

Brandon speculated that part of the SFMOMA’s apparent reluctance to take a firm stance on Floyd’s murder was due to its conservative donor base. Powerful board members include Charles Schwab, one of the country’s most prolific Donald Trump donors, as well as other beneficiaries of military and police contracts. “They always ask, ‘How can we keep talking without rocking the boat?'” Said Brandon ARTnews. “But museums are not neutral.”

Brandon’s experience quickly spurred others in the Bay Area arts scene to action. Artists and organizations such as Leila Weefur, Elena Gross and the collective Nure and CTRL + Shift withdrew digital orders from SFMOMA and founded the No Neutral Alliance together with Taylor. “To make amends,” said Brandon, “we need to see more than an excuse – action must be taken.”

On June 12, the Alliance released a letter calling on Benezra to resign, stating that in his apology he had assumed responsibility for Brandon’s censorship. The same letter also called for a re-examination of the formal complaints of bias by museum employees; Donations to memorial funds for George Floyd and fellow police shooting victim Tony McDade, as well as the Oakland-based anti-police terror project; and a new curatorial program with black leadership.

SFMOMA was noticeably quiet on official channels and has not posted on Instagram since Benezra’s apology on June 4th. Before the letter from the former employees appeared on Tuesday, No Neutral Alliance discussed the terms of a meeting with Benezra and other leaders. Previously, Brandon said, the alliance insisted that the museum include demographics about its employees and artists in its collection. “That would have been the beginning of some kind of accountability,” she said.

Since closing to the public in March, SFMOMA has announced temporary and permanent layoffs affecting around 350 employees, roughly 68 percent of the pre-pandemic workforce. Some vacations and hourly cuts were reversed when the museum received a largely forgivable $ 6.2 million loan through the state salary protection program in April. Still, SFMOMA announced the final round of layoffs this month, citing a budget deficit of $ 18 million.

According to critics among the current employees, the museum management has not sufficiently exhausted the alternatives to the layoffs. In April, concerned workers from the museum’s union (one of the oldest and largest in the country, represented by OPEIU Local 29) asked leadership for salary cuts, the use of foundation funds, the sale of works of art from the collection, and calls for donations from trustees. With such measures, they wrote, SFMOMA could easily raise enough to avert layoffs. The petition indicated that Benezra receives around $ 1 million annually, arguing that the gap between his compensation and that of staff on leave should “embarrass” wealthy SFMOMA customers.

Benezra and other senior museum officials have since made unspecified pay cuts, according to an SFMOMA spokesman. Still, some continue to enjoy perks that are unique in the art world. Public records show that SFMOMA’s board of directors approved interest-free home loans for Benezra and senior curator Gary Garrels for $ 800,000 and $ 500,000, respectively. For frontline workers who have struggled to raise the cost of living in San Francisco, the credit is a gross injustice of the institution.

Nat Naylor, the museum’s longtime OPEIU representative, stressed that union negotiators have achieved severance and reinstatement terms for many of the dismissed members that go beyond the contractual guarantee. “Do I think some of the layoffs were opportunistic, both unionized and non-union? Absolutely. “Naylor continued,” Do I think the museum has explored all other possible savings?

The union has also prominently supported Brandon and stepped up its demands for racial justice. In 2018, Naylor said, the museum committed to creating a training program to bring underrepresented groups into the historically white and male ranks of art dealers. “The museum has to answer for not getting it done,” said Naylor. “It speaks volumes to me that no one in the upper management level has owned it and made it happen – it’s not a priority.”

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