When four women on the board of trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art abruptly ended their affiliation recently, it spotlighted an intense, largely behind-the-scenes debate: the perceived lack of commitment to cultural diversity in cultural institutions, locally and nationwide.
While the women, three African-American and one Hispanic, respected and well-known executives and entrepreneurs in Chicago, declined to specify their reasons for leaving, talk within the museum world was that it was out of frustration that the museum wasn’t moving fast enough on diversity initiatives.
MCA Executive Director Robert Fitzpatrick conceded that he hadn’t achieved the desired progress on initiatives inclusive of racial minorities, but he said he is actively seeking solutions.
“What just kills me,” Fitzpatrick said of the board departures, “is that the MCA’s at a point where it’s probably doing more than ever before, and when we are finally in a position to do so much more.”
Now, Fitzpatrick has the added challenge of trying to fill the vacant board positions with new minority representatives in a fiercely competitive environment and with a small pool of eligible and interested candidates. It is a challenge faced by virtually every major museum in the country, experts say.
At the MCA, the departing trustees were Johnson Publishing Co. President and Chief Operating Officer Linda Johnson Rice, Peoples Energy Vice President for Communications Desiree Rogers, and entrepreneurs Maria Bechily-Hodes and Linda Walker Bynoe.
While Rogers would not speak specifically about the MCA, her views on cultural diversity in art museums echoed those of many nationwide: Diversity is not just a moral and ethical must, it is good business.
“Over and beyond that, it’s the right thing to do. Museums need to diversify because they need minority populations to survive,” she said. “These days, you can’t live on just traditional art aficionados.”
Still, almost a decade after a report issued by the American Association of Museums urged the nation’s art museums to take a more active role in expanding inclusion efforts, museums like the MCA are still finding themselves under attack for failing to make significant progress.
The effort, insiders said, is far more complex than originally envisioned.
“Diversity on the board is very important, absolutely,” Fitzpatrick said. “But am I going to go out tomorrow and stop the first two people of color I see? Absolutely not. I want people who care, who are going to help the museum grow.”
Toni Smith, a senior director at Spencer Stuart, a search firm specializing in executive placement and consulting for museums, said, “The nature of museums, particularly art museums, is pretty exclusive. Until recently, museums were focused on high wealth populations, because these are the collectors, and collectors are important to museums.”
“And art collecting of the sort that goes into museums has traditionally been a white world,” she said, “not unlike tennis or golf.”
Fitzpatrick said the museum has been in constant turmoil in the past year, with unforeseen turnovers in every major administrative position, from the director’s office to the curatorial staff. Still, it recently filled the post of chief financial officer–the museum’s third highest–with Vicki Wilson, an African-American woman with master’s degrees from Harvard and Yale.
The landmark 1992 American Association of Museums report, “Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums,” noted that because of shifting racial demographics in America’s urban centers, museums must increase their roles as public servants. The report called for increased numbers of minorities not just in exhibitions or audience, but also behind the scenes, in curatorial and administrative positions.
Most museums adopted the report’s ideals and some tried aggressively to recruit minorities into board and staff positions, with mixed results.
The institutions found themselves with no single formula or approach to solve the problem and few, if any, precedents.
“There was a huge debate,” said Rachel Weiss, founder of the arts administration program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “Lots of times, people on museum boards would say, `We have to get African-Americans, Latinos–do you know any?’ “
Some museums tried target programming, such as featuring African-American artists during Black History Month. Others, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have targeted black and Latino schoolchildren in New York, giving away free passes during field trips for their families to be used on a future visit.
Nonetheless, many institutions soon discovered the mission was considerably more complex than they first expected.
“What happens when you take that initiative is that it raises systemic questions,” said Nick Rabkin, senior program officer with the MacArthur Foundation, which is known for strongly valuing diversity in race, gender and class, when making grant decisions.
“You can’t just do the same stuff and advertise in the Defender. Suddenly, you have additional questions about staff, board, approaches and strategies.”
When minorities are chosen to serve by cultural institutions–perhaps because of the smaller number of people with the time and resources to participate–they are often asked to be on multiple boards, which some said they find taxing.
“The people of color on boards can be a small group,” Rogers said. “You tend to see some of the same faces over and over.”
Rogers still serves on five other cultural organization boards, including Ravinia, the Smithsonian and the Museum of Science and Industry, where she heads the program committee.
Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, one of the nation’s top museums and a top tourist attraction, has been a leader in diversity efforts. Currently, 10 percent of its 60-member board and 25 percent of its management staff are racial minorities, said chief of staff Cecile Keith Brown, an African-American woman.
Alma Ruiz, assistant curator at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, said the 32-member board at her institution “is not well diversified right now.” There is one African-American and one Korean-American board member, but in a city that is overwhelmingly Latino, there are no Latino members.
But for other museums–even in unlikely places such as Minneapolis–diversity has not proved as elusive.
“We have tried to look at diversity in a comprehensive way, not just among race and gender, but educational level, income level, age level,” said David Galligan, administrative director of the Walker Arts Center. “We like to think of it as synthetic integration.”
Closer to home, the Art Institute conducted a long-range strategic study in 1989 that helped it identify ways to reach a broader audience while holding on to its traditional base. Thanks to a grant from the Lilla Wallace Reader’s Digest Foundation, the art museum has increased attendance by African-Americans to about 7 percent, and up to 10 percent for exhibits featuring black artists. Black membership at the museum jumped from 2,000 to 5,200 in the last four years.
But while minority participation on its staff, among its volunteers and in its contracting projects has increased, the museum is still lacking in racial minorities in its administration.
Of the 69 members of the board of trustees, only five are minorities. While almost 10 percent of its curatorial staff members are minority, only one of 16 full-time curators is. Only 15 percent of the museum’s 442 managerial staff members are minority.
Still, for Fitzpatrick at the MCA, the Art Institute’s success is heartening–not only as evidence of what can be done, but because the woman generally regarded as its architect, Ronne Hartfield, former executive director of the Art Institute, joined his administrative staff to consult on diversity issues months before the recent board defections.
Although at least one of the departing trustees refers to a recent MCA diversity study as “scathing,” Hartfield calls it “a very moderate report . . . what you’d expect, and from my own perception, pretty accurate. Its conclusions were that the museum is making good steps, but the city would like to see more.”
