One Organization's Fight To Bring Black Liberation Within The White Walls Of Museums: A Conversation With Kevin Whiteneir
Written and illustrated by Channing Smith, Art Director
As our country begins to reexamine race relations and white supremacy in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, many are calling for the removal of historical statues and monuments that honor slave owners. So we must ask ourselves what symbols of our past should be remembered, idolized, scrutinized or discarded? While art continues to be the voice of the revolutionary – as seen in Black Lives Matter murals, graffiti and protest signs – many museums remain silent.
It’s easy to think of museums as objective and neutral: blank white walls that serve to empower the voices and opinions of their artists. However, these white walls are far from impartial. Behind every museum is a gatekeeping board that decides what is – and what is not – art.
The field of art history and museums as institutions is overwhelmingly white. According to a report 2017 from the American Alliance of Museums, 93 percent of museum directors are white, as are 92.6 percent of board chairs and 89.3 percent of board members.
“Art institutions can absolutely undergo true reform, if they are willing to put people before prestige,” Kevin Whiteneir said.
Whiteneir is a project manager for Black Lunch Table (BLT). In his own words, BLT is a group that, “encourages marginalized people to actively discuss and confront issues of racism, classism, misogyny, queerphobia, and other sociocultural ails in their communities, the art world, and the production of information, knowledge, and research.”
With a master’s in art history and a second master’s-in-progress in library and information science, Whiteneir’s focus is on bringing attention and mindfulness to histories of poorly represented communities in the West. BLT houses hundreds of conversations and performance art with academics, experts and artists on their site, so it helps that Whiteneir also geeks out over archiving.
“It is my philosophy that art historical education, and the art world more broadly, must reckon with its past and do right by the people that they have suppressed,” Whiteneir said.
Our entire country is grappling with this question: “How can we unlearn and relearn how race has affected our everyday lives?” Furthermore, what role do museums play in this search for – or as an obstacle to – Black liberation?
To begin, it’s essential to understand where the objects and art in museums come from. According to a report commissioned by the French president Emmanuel Macron, no less than 90 percent of African cultural property resides in European museums. Macron followed up with a three-phase plan of restitution.
“Many institutions have acquired their collections through symptoms and byproducts of colonialism, war, genocide, invasion, etc,” Whiteneir said. “As the benefactors of these historically violent actions, if they truly want to reform they have to be willing to have honest and straightforward conversations with those harmed by those actions.”
If our viewing of said collections and our knowledge of different cultures comes only in the context of stolen property, it proves difficult to truly respect and appreciate these cultures. Displaying indigenous art like trophies of conquest leaves little room for equity and lots of room for exploitation.
For the artists whose work was not stolen, but displayed as part of partnership, there are still hard realities of privilege and racial discrimination to unpack. A 2019 study surveyed the collection of 18 major US museums to identify the racial, ethnic and gender makeup of the artists represented. The results revealed 85.4 percent of work across the collections belonged to white artists.
When museums maintain majority-white boards and continue to show majority-white artists, they effectively gatekeep art and perpetuate systemic racism.
Not only do museums need to hire more people of color and display more artists of color, but they need to rethink the context of these collections to ensure that they are not tokenizing or appropriating race.
“The first step to me is to see leaders and administrators of art spaces ask themselves ‘why are you evoking race and Blackness’ within your galleries?” Whiteneir said.
In digging deeper as to why an institution would want to display a collection relating to race, museums can make sure the collection is curated appropriately and with the best intentions.
“You must work with members of these communities to get holistic and full understandings of their culture before you decide to create shows about them,” Whiteneir said. “And I emphasize members because it is important that the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color not be treated as monoliths.”
Art is an essential vehicle for protest as we have seen over the last few months. Crowds of activists brandish hand-crafted signs and spread their messages with spray paint. Art serves as a way for us to connect with each other, to rise up, to make change and to express ourselves. However, if museums continue to neglect the voices of BIPOC individuals, they pose a very real threat to the natural beauty and diversity of humanity.