It is no longer a secret that twenty-first century art museums are having a staffing issue. Recent demographic surveys have revealed what many people already know: that the individuals who hold senior-level positions at most art institutions are overwhelmingly white and from a privileged socioeconomic background. Clear pipelines to positions of leadership simply do not exist for museum workers of color, an issue compounded by the sector’s continued reliance on unpaid internships and underpaid entry-level positions. A lack of diversity in board members and leadership staff has led to a lack of diversity in the narratives presented on museum walls, as well as homogenous visitor demographics. These issues have ultimately resulted in uninviting art institutions, which now run the risk of becoming irrelevant to the communities that they claim to serve and represent. Upon realizing that this model is clearly not sustainable, museums across the country have announced that they will prioritize diversity and inclusion initiatives, yet have been met with varying degrees of success in implementing these programs. Curious about how arts organizations in Chicago were confronting the issue of diversity in leadership, I sat down to speak with Jill Bugajski, Executive Director of Academic Engagement and Research at the Art Institute of Chicago about the museum’s plan to play a part in changing the city’s cultural landscape.
According to Bugajski, a study on museum worker demographics conducted by the Mellon Foundation in 2015 was what helped to spark a national conversation about a lack of diversity in museum leadership. The Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey, conducted in partnership with the Association of Art Museum Directors and the Alliance for American Museums, reported that only 28 percent of art museum staffs identify as people of color, and despite the fact that 38 percent of Americans identify as Asian, Black, Hispanic or multiracial, only 16 percent of leadership roles at art museums are held by people of color. The makeup of American museum boards have reflected a similar reality. In a recent report on board diversity, it was found that 80 percent of board members are white (25 percent of boards are entirely white), 52 percent are male, and 57 percent are over the age of 50. While significant progress has been made towards representation in leadership for women, the lack of viable entry points or a pipeline system has meant that similar progress in the sector has not been made for people of color.
These demographic statistics have led to a discussion of new priorities for many funders and grant-making organizations as well. As far back as 1989, Illinois U.S. Rep. Cardiss Collins began arguing for the reconsideration of federal support for museums due to what amounted to workplace segregation. Thirty years later, New York City’s most recent cultural plan, released in 2016, proposed cutting funding to the city’s arts organizations should their hiring practices remain exclusionary. However, rather than withdrawing financial support, some foundations have decided to actively fund changemaking in the sector, prioritizing support for institutions who have committed to the creation of sustainable, diverse, and equitable staffing practices. In 2015, the same year the Mellon Foundation report was released, the Ford Foundation announced that they were shifting the focus of their grant-making entirely to address issues of inequality. As part of this effort, in 2017 Ford launched a nation-wide program in partnership with the Walton Foundation entitled the Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative (DAMLI). This Initiative funds programs at twenty American arts organizations, including the Art Institute of Chicago, which are aimed at training, mentoring, and hiring museum workers of color, as well as programming for more diverse audiences.
For the next three years, the Art Institute will be receiving funding from the Ford and Walton Foundation to support DAMLI programs, which will affect the museum across all departments and impact internships, recruitment, and programming. Bugajski is a part of a working group composed of seventeen Art Institute employees representing multiple departments. The makeup of the group reflects the holistic, museum-wide approach that the Art Institute is taking towards supporting diversity, rather than focusing efforts within a single department like Human Resources. The changes created by the Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative at the Art Institute are difficult to neatly encapsulate, as implementation addresses the complexity of an institution at which all aspects of operation are interconnected. As Bugajski emphasized, “if every department begins to do things a little differently, there’s the potential for major change to occur.” Creating a more diverse and inclusive museum requires the active involvement of every staff member, from curators to preparators to administrators. A holistic approach will ensure that the resulting changes from DAMLI will be truly systemic and sustainable.
The Art Institute is prioritizing long-lasting changes to leadership primarily by investing in a pipeline model for cultural workers of color, particularly focusing on students who are at the beginning of their college careers. The art world is well known for its reliance upon unpaid internships, often instead compensating young workers with experience and college credit. This system creates a barrier to valuable experience and mentorship for those who do not have the socioeconomic privilege of being able to work for free. Although funding from DAMLI will not entirely eliminate unpaid internships at the Art Institute, it will create twenty new paid internship placements for young people from historically underrepresented backgrounds, as well as convert previously unpaid internships into paid positions. Bugajski’s department, Academic Engagement and Research, has been working with foundations to create internship pipelines for several years, most notably running The Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program. Established in 2013, the program provides a summer curatorial intensive as well as two-year fellowship positions to college students of color to develop their skills and networks as future curators. Outside of Bugajski’s department, internships at the Art Institute have not been centralized under one program in any way, and have been managed by individual departments and supervisors. This system has led to disparities in payment and mentorship, based on the resources available to the particular department the intern is working in. It is hoped that by creating a centralized program of DAMLI internships, the organization will lead to better oversight and more productive experiences for interns, regardless of position.
An often overlooked, yet important way to support students just beginning their careers in cultural work is to enable them to feel connected to the institutions they work at, and to make them aware of trends developing the sector more broadly. The changes to the Art Institute’s internship program for young museum professionals of color are not only focused on providing adequate financial compensation for labor, but also on ensuring that the students make the interpersonal connections that are needed to be successful in the museum sector. To create this support system, Bugajski’s working group is creating an interdepartmental cohort of interns, setting aside time in which they can meet regularly, thereby allowing the students to form relationships with one another rather than remaining isolated in their respective departments. The Art Institute will also be creating a virtual networking tool for interns via an online alumni association hosted on LinkedIn.com. This initiative marks the first time the Art Institute has attempted to create a network for interns, ensuring they remain connected to the museum and to each other once their internships at the museum have ended. In a field where success is often predicated on who you know, sustaining the relationships made at the Art Institute will play an essential role in supporting interns’ careers.
These newly created DAMLI internships also present an important opportunity for young people to be exposed to the wide breadth of opportunity that exists in the world of museum careers, and to see how diverse career paths in the field can be. Internships are an essential time during which one has the freedom to explore, and Bugajski hopes that the time students spend at the Art Institute will help them to feel comfortable with fluidity and uncertainty in their own career paths, and will allow them to let their interests evolve organically. The vast majority of the labor that goes into putting on an exhibition at the Art Institute is invisible to the public, and Bugajski wants to make every step of the process, in every department, visible to young people. To those who are not well acquainted with art institutions, that which is thought of as museum labor is limited to the curatorial department. Few consider the other administrative, financial, and preparatory support systems that must be in place for an exhibition to be successfully created. By demystifying the exhibition-making process and exposing students to different varieties of labor at the museum, it is hoped that students will be given the opportunity to discover what kind of work best suits a student’s individual skills, personality, and ambition.
With new internships in place, the Art Institute has also begun to focus on implementing change to staff training and structure. Through DAMLI funding, the museum has created a new full-time position in the Human Resources department, specifically to work with young people and colleges to expand and diversify the museum’s communication network. Recruitment efforts will begin to be focused outside of the Art Institute’s usual scope, in an attempt to reach out with opportunities to young people who may not have originally considered working at the museum as a possibility. The Art Institute will also implement training programs for staff in all departments at every level to ensure that the entire museum is well-equipped to support interns and implement new programming.
In our current cultural moment, diversifying the voices of leadership in our cultural institutions is more important than ever. Many museums have responded to recent political events by emphasizing their role as an inclusive and equitable space in which everyone is welcome. However, claiming to support equity without taking steps to eliminate unpaid labor, create support systems for museum workers of color, or attempting to diversify boardrooms is ultimately meaningless. Institutions are complex and notoriously slow-moving, and systemic change is difficult to implement. However, it is promising that museums like The Art Institute of Chicago have begun to take a self-critical look at the work they do, and commit to laying the foundations for long-term changes in leadership. It is essential that funders and grant-makers continue to support organizations in equity efforts through programs like the Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative, rather than threatening to eliminate funding to arts organizations who are not making changes fast enough. As Bugajski noted, it is time for museums like the Art Institute to commit to putting in the work it will take to create more inclusive, pluralistic institutions, even though it is frustrating and disappointing that current conditions have made this work necessary. Changes to Chicago’s cultural leadership will not be limited to the Art Institute; The National Museum of Mexican Art and the DuSable Museum of African American History have also received funding from the Ford Foundation to create fellowship positions at their organizations for graduate students of color. Even though DAMLI is only a three-year grant, the impacts it will have on museum leadership in Chicago and across the country will, hopefully, be long-lasting.
