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Speaker 1: Pushkin, I'm Helen Molesworth and from Pushkin Industries, Something Else

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Speaker 1: and Sony Music Entertainment. This is Death of an Artist.

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Speaker 1: In our first six episodes, we talked a lot about

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Speaker 1: the art world, because there's no way to talk about

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Speaker 1: what happened to Anna without also talking about the art world.

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Speaker 1: And there's no way to talk about the art world

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Speaker 1: without talking about how commercial art galleries and museums have

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Speaker 1: a history of what feels like overwhelming racism and sexism.

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Speaker 1: But surely now in the twenty first century, things would

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Speaker 1: be different, especially in the wake of the Me Too

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Speaker 1: and Black Lives Matter movements, when museums began publicly touting

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Speaker 1: their dedication to diversity. Right in the art world overall

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Speaker 1: believes in progress and believes in itself as a pioneer

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Speaker 1: of progress. The consensus and the armal tends to be

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Speaker 1: that we are heading in the right direction, and we

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Speaker 1: just weren't sure if that was true. We wanted to

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Speaker 1: apply some effects to that to see if it were

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Speaker 1: in fact the case. This is Charlotte Burns, an arts

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Speaker 1: writer turned data minor. She and her colleague Julia Halpron

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Speaker 1: wanted to quantify how big the disparities in the art

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Speaker 1: world really were and see if those disparities were actually shrinking.

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Speaker 1: They started by gathering information from museums about artworks made

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Speaker 1: by African American artists. The first data study we did

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Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen. There was enormous media attention at that

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Speaker 1: point looking at the work of Black American artists, and

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Speaker 1: I remember one particular headline reading It's a great time

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Speaker 1: to be an African American artist. And I just thought

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Speaker 1: that was so interesting because this is twenty eighteen, this

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Speaker 1: is knee deep in the Trump presidency. It didn't seem

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Speaker 1: like a great time overall. And so if the art

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Speaker 1: world was so fantastic, how was that the case. If

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Speaker 1: that were the case, maybe we could analyze that to

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Speaker 1: understand it, and if it weren't the case, perhaps we

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Speaker 1: should all stop writing it. Even though many museum websites

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Speaker 1: provide information about the works in their collections, no one

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Speaker 1: in museums has been doing any data analysis. So Julia

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Speaker 1: and Charlotte began asking art museums to voluntarily provide the

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Speaker 1: numbers about how many works by African American artists were

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Speaker 1: in their collections. Here's Julia. We pitched it to museums.

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Speaker 1: As you know, we want to show how progress happens,

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Speaker 1: just assuming that there had been progress, and so we

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Speaker 1: started by asking around thirty museums in the US, a

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Speaker 1: mix of the most attended and then smaller regional and

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Speaker 1: university museums, about their acquisitions of work by Black American

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Speaker 1: artists and exhibitions of work by Black American artists from

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Speaker 1: two thousand and eight until twenty eighteen. So let me

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Speaker 1: break some of this down. When Julia and Charlotte talk

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Speaker 1: about acquisitions, they are using the word that museum folks

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Speaker 1: use to describe the process of how a museum adds

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Speaker 1: works to its collection. Before I get into how that works,

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Speaker 1: let me just sketch the powermap. There are curators. They

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Speaker 1: are experts on art and their job is to know

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Speaker 1: the collection and make recommendations about what the collection needs.

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Speaker 1: The curator's boss is the director. The director's job is

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Speaker 1: to raise funds to keep the museum afloat and to

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Speaker 1: set the tone in direction of the organization. The director's

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Speaker 1: boss at the very top are the trustees. These folks

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Speaker 1: are fiscally responsible for the museum and they make large

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Speaker 1: annual donations of cash that support every aspect of the

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Speaker 1: museum's function. Okay, so acquisitions happen in two ways. They

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Speaker 1: can either be purchased or they can be gifts. Purchases

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Speaker 1: have their own extremely complicated set of politics since they

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Speaker 1: almost always require fundraising, and fundraising means donors. Then there

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Speaker 1: are gifts. Gifts typically come from three kinds of folks, donors, trustees,

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Speaker 1: or artists. Now the museum can decide to accept or

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Speaker 1: not accept a gift. All of that might sound straightforward enough,

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Speaker 1: except that there are serious power dynamics at work. There's

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Speaker 1: often a difference between what a curator might want to

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Speaker 1: purchase or ask for and what a donor or trustee

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Speaker 1: wants to give or provide money to buy. That misalignment

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Speaker 1: can happen at every level, between curator and director, between

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Speaker 1: the museum's staff and the donors, between the trustees themselves,

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Speaker 1: and between the trustees and the curators. All of these

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Speaker 1: political vectors are probably grist for a from podcast. Suffices

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Speaker 1: to say that museum acquisitions are at the very heart

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Speaker 1: of the matter, because what a museum acquires says this

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Speaker 1: is worth saving in perpetuity. Anyway, back to Julia and Charlotte,

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Speaker 1: who started out looking at acquisitions, all those purchases and

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Speaker 1: gifts together. They also looked at exhibitions, both show you

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Speaker 1: which artists the museum things are important. We found the

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Speaker 1: acquisitions that were being made were about a fifth of

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Speaker 1: the population or representation level of African Americans in the US. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: two point four percent of all acquisitions against seven point

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Speaker 1: six percent of all exhibitions. And that year we looked

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Speaker 1: at the thirty American museums, so it was around a

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Speaker 1: fifth of what it ought based on the demographics of

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Speaker 1: the country. Their data contradicted the myth of the art

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Speaker 1: world as being an inclusive and diverse place. So Charlotte

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Speaker 1: and Julia decided they needed to expand their investigation to

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Speaker 1: look at another underrepresented group. Women. When we started, we thought,

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Speaker 1: you know, women are more than half the population. We're

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Speaker 1: going to need a database. It's going to be so

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Speaker 1: complicated to process all of this information because it's going

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Speaker 1: to be so much of it. And it turned out

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Speaker 1: Google Sheets was fine because there wasn't very much. The

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Speaker 1: title of their report sums up what they found. They

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Speaker 1: called it quote Women's Place in the Art World. Why

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Speaker 1: recent advancements for female artists are largely an illusion we

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Speaker 1: found in that case. Similarly, it was a fifth of

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Speaker 1: what it should have been. Demographically, women represented about eleven

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Speaker 1: percent of acquisitions at around twenty five US museums. It

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Speaker 1: was disheartening to see that the numbers were so low,

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Speaker 1: and it was positively gutting for me personally to see

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Speaker 1: that they were actually on the decline for almost a

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Speaker 1: decade by the time the report came out. Changes discussed

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Speaker 1: in these very timid terms, and I remember a big

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Speaker 1: museum director saying this to us, we're getting there, we

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Speaker 1: are getting I said, well, we're not, because it's stored

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine. And they said, you know,

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Speaker 1: changes coming. And I just remember saying, but when do

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Speaker 1: you think we'll get there to parity, because at this

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Speaker 1: rate it's going to take literal eons. And it's not

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Speaker 1: like we haven't known about women. It's not some new

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Speaker 1: fangled concept like, you know, the people who make up

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Speaker 1: more than half the populations. I think it was a

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Speaker 1: bit rude of me actually in a way, because I said,

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Speaker 1: one did give birth to you, actually, you know, and me,

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Speaker 1: and so it's our first concept of humanity was formed

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Speaker 1: by the female body. And so they just started laughing.

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Speaker 1: Charlotte and Julia are about to release their third report,

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Speaker 1: one that looks at an even broader set of data.

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Speaker 1: More on that after a quick break to recap arts

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Speaker 1: writers Charlotte Burns and Julia Halpern have released two reports,

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Speaker 1: one on African American artists and the other on women artists,

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Speaker 1: and both showed that these groups were radically underrepresented among

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Speaker 1: the museums that provided data. And now Charlotte and Julia

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Speaker 1: are about to release their third report. So our data

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Speaker 1: set is larger and more comprehensive than it's ever been.

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Speaker 1: We're looking at over thirty museums and a much more

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Speaker 1: representative swath of the country, so not just clustered on

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Speaker 1: the coasts, but looking really at institutions that are across

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Speaker 1: the US. And we're looking at updating the program and

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Speaker 1: looking at exhibitions and acquisitions of Black American and female

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Speaker 1: artists at this group of museums between two thousand and

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Speaker 1: eight and the end of twenty twenty. Is the anticipation

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Speaker 1: killing you? Do you think the upward tick that so

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Speaker 1: many of us have been working for has arrived From

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Speaker 1: the initial data that we've gathered, there has been no

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Speaker 1: progress I'm going to be honest. When my producer Luisa

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Speaker 1: suggested we interview Charlotte and Julia, I didn't have the

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Speaker 1: heart to do it. I already knew all these facts,

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Speaker 1: both from reading their reports and from well decades of

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Speaker 1: working at museums, so I let Luisa interview them herself.

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Speaker 1: I knew it would just make me feel that all

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Speaker 1: too familiar mix of angry and sad. And it did,

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Speaker 1: and it does. Women peak in two thousand and nine,

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Speaker 1: and acquisitions slowly trend downward from there. In terms of

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Speaker 1: the share of the overall acquisitions and museums for Black

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Speaker 1: American artists, it is a very moderate incline, extremely low

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Speaker 1: on the chart. You're talking about to three percent, increasing

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Speaker 1: so slightly over the years between twenty eight and twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty that it almost locks flat. I remember just looking

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Speaker 1: at these spreadsheets and we were both it was like

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Speaker 1: a summer tropical rainstorm. It was really oppressive, and we

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Speaker 1: both felt very depressed looking at the data, just thinking,

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Speaker 1: oh my god, this is so much worse than we imagined.

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Speaker 1: And we were like, oh, you know, we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk to museums and everyone's you know, we felt so galvanized,

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Speaker 1: we imagined other people would. The reaction, at least among

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Speaker 1: much of the art world was not what they'd hoped for.

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Speaker 1: And then there was a pretty clear breakdown. This is

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Speaker 1: a bit simplistic, but essentially people in power. We would

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Speaker 1: take the data to them and it was like their

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Speaker 1: brains couldn't quite They had to unscramble it and come

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Speaker 1: up with a reason why it wasn't the reality that

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Speaker 1: chimed with this. Despite how clear the findings were, despite

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Speaker 1: the fact that the museums themselves had provided the data,

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Speaker 1: Charlotte and Julia found a lot of resistance. It's amazing

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Speaker 1: how quickly the institutions just start finger pointing. You often hear, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, you're not counting all of the African artists

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Speaker 1: or other parts of the African diaspora that we're focusing on,

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Speaker 1: and so you hear just a lot of discomfort with

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Speaker 1: the reality. You know. Part of the reason that we

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Speaker 1: did the women's survey after the African American surveys, because

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Speaker 1: one of the museum directors said, you know, we've really

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Speaker 1: been focusing on women, we haven't really had time to

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Speaker 1: pay attention to African American artists. You should look at women,

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Speaker 1: And then we did, as we already know, the women's

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Speaker 1: numbers weren't any better in comparison to the general public,

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Speaker 1: one fifth of what they should be. So what's the

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Speaker 1: excuse with women? You'll hear, Oh, well, they're just fewer

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Speaker 1: women poor artists, And then you know, we point to

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Speaker 1: the graduation rates, and that conversation kind of sputters into silence.

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Speaker 1: They actually cited a study that showed that about an

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Speaker 1: equal number of men and women graduated from art school

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Speaker 1: at Yale since the early nineteen eighties. So the question remains, why,

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Speaker 1: if the art world is full of people who imagine

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Speaker 1: themselves as progressive and inclusive, why aren't the actual numbers

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Speaker 1: bearing that out. To answer that question, it helps to

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Speaker 1: look a little closer at where there is some movement.

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Speaker 1: Exhibitions tend to show more progress than acquisitions, which I

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Speaker 1: think shows the influence of curators, and also that segment

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Speaker 1: of how museums interact with their publics can change a

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Speaker 1: little bit more quickly. Even exhibitions are planned two to

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Speaker 1: three years in advance, whereas acquisitions, which is really the

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Speaker 1: long tail of what museums do. It's what will stand

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Speaker 1: the test of time that has proven to be so

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Speaker 1: much stickier in terms of changing because the people who

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Speaker 1: make those decisions, the curators can suggest what museums might

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Speaker 1: want to acquire, but the ultimate decision is made by

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Speaker 1: the people who told the purse strings, so the board

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Speaker 1: and the people who are a bit more entrenched in

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Speaker 1: the systems of power. And so that's I think one

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Speaker 1: reason why you see change being a lot slower. It's

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Speaker 1: important to know the curators have more control over exhibitions,

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Speaker 1: and exhibitions cost less money and they are temporary, but

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Speaker 1: what goes into the permanent collection via acquisitions has more

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Speaker 1: impact because the permanent collection is basically a reflection, consciously

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Speaker 1: or unconsciously of what the museum really stands for. So

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Speaker 1: in a world where men are still paid more than women,

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Speaker 1: a world in which the law of the land favors

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Speaker 1: men over women, where the dominant histories are written by

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Speaker 1: men about men, and to compound matters, this world we're

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Speaker 1: talking about is also a world that continually favors whiteness. Well,

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Speaker 1: all of this starts to add up. This is why

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Speaker 1: we talk about racism and sexism as being structural and systemic,

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Speaker 1: not just being about personal biases held by individuals. Racism

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Speaker 1: and sexism are literally built into the very structure of

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Speaker 1: how institutions operate. It's all very depressing into spiriting. And

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Speaker 1: I say that as a white woman with a lot

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Speaker 1: of power in this world, so I have to ask,

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Speaker 1: can we find some hope here? Some museums will say

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Speaker 1: that point is to their data and say, look, if

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Speaker 1: you look at what we're buying, it's a totally different

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Speaker 1: picture than our overall picture, because we're really trying to

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Speaker 1: buy more diversely and therefore break the data down that way.

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Speaker 1: And a lot of that change is dependent upon a

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Speaker 1: new generation of women in leadership and increasing demands by

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Speaker 1: curators and arts professionals of color. But according to Julia

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Speaker 1: and Charlotte, that still doesn't budge the needle because museums

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Speaker 1: are given a lot more artwork than they are able

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Speaker 1: to buy. So what museums can buy remains quite small

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Speaker 1: compared to what they're given. And they've been set up

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Speaker 1: that way from the very beginning. They are set up

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Speaker 1: to court patrons. Gifts come often from people who are

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Speaker 1: on the board, from people who have been involved with

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Speaker 1: the museum, from old school patrons essentially, and those old

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Speaker 1: school patrons tend to have collected art that reflects in

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Speaker 1: the antiquated picture of art history and the picture of

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Speaker 1: art history that museums have told for decades. It all

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Speaker 1: comes back to structure. The patrons system that museums rely

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Speaker 1: on is inhibiting progress. Museums too often bend to the

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Speaker 1: taste and desires of their donors, because the donors are

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Speaker 1: the folks who pay the salaries. The only thing I

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Speaker 1: keep thinking about is this one moment when MoMA reopened

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Speaker 1: its new galleries. It was a much more egalitarian look

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Speaker 1: at art history. It was trying to tell a really

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Speaker 1: different story from the ones that had been told before.

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Speaker 1: And I was on a tour with a couple of

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Speaker 1: board members and a curator, and one of the board

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Speaker 1: members looked at two works. One was by Helma off

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Speaker 1: clim To, whose female medium slash artist who's just started

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Speaker 1: to get more recognition as an early pioneer in abstraction.

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Speaker 1: And the board member said, you know, wouldn't that look

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Speaker 1: so much better over there in this other part of

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Speaker 1: the room. And the curator said, oh, that's really interesting.

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Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that, Like, maybe you will look

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Speaker 1: into it. I'm sure the curator had thought about it.

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Speaker 1: They've been more on this prehan for over five years.

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Speaker 1: But to me, it was just this encapsulation of how

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Speaker 1: the patron model works. You know, the patron says something

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Speaker 1: and you have to take it really seriously because they

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Speaker 1: are the ones putting gas in the tank of the institution.

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Speaker 1: Now we're back to the question I've been asking all along,

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Speaker 1: can you separate the art from the artist. The findings

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Speaker 1: of this new report seem to indicate that we're almost

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Speaker 1: incapable of separating the art from the artist. I think

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Speaker 1: it's like one of these moot propositions, the idea that

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Speaker 1: the artist is ever separate from the art, which just

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Speaker 1: doesn't work that way. I mean, as someone who studied

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Speaker 1: art history, you learn all about the person and the

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Speaker 1: context and the time, and nothing exists in a vacuum.

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Speaker 1: And so I think any conversations about what a person

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Speaker 1: did or didn't do, if they were a good person,

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Speaker 1: you know, whether they paid their taxes, whether they murdered someone,

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Speaker 1: all of that is just part of the evolving context

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Speaker 1: about history and how we understand value and what we venerate,

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Speaker 1: and those things shift, and that's the point of it

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Speaker 1: the cannons meant to expand and contract. Often you hear

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Speaker 1: people say, well, what if the guy who discovered this

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Speaker 1: really important scientific element was a huge sexist in his

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Speaker 1: private life. We can't discount this important work that has

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Speaker 1: shaped our world and our culture because of who people are.

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Speaker 1: My response to that would be, we're not talking about science.

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Speaker 1: We're talking about art, and art is informed by who

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Speaker 1: you are. It's something that you create based on your

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Speaker 1: identity and your worldview and your beliefs, and so it

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Speaker 1: seems absurd to separate the two because they were never

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Speaker 1: separated in the first place. You know, Picasso was terribly

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Speaker 1: abusive to many of the women in his life, and

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Speaker 1: he also spent a lot of his career painting images

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Speaker 1: of women. So it seems crazy to pretend like those

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Speaker 1: two things have nothing to do with each other. It's

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Speaker 1: ironic to me that we keep ending up with this question,

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Speaker 1: and it seems clear that the institutional insistence on separating

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Speaker 1: the art and the artist is a structural problem, one

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Speaker 1: that leads to many ills, like still showing Carl Andre's

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Speaker 1: work without telling the story of what happened to Anna Mendieta,

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Speaker 1: and this incredible lack of diversity in museum collections. I

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Speaker 1: feel pretty certain that if we can course correct on

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Speaker 1: this front, we will actually help clear the path for change.

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Speaker 1: But let's not stop there. Let's connect the museum trustee

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Speaker 1: to the museum. Let's connect the past to the present.

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Speaker 1: What we're arguing about is now. We're arguing about the

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Speaker 1: past in order to discuss the present and ideally shape

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Speaker 1: a better future. So of course we might want to

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Speaker 1: kill some darlings, create new monuments, and move forwards, because

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Speaker 1: that's the point, and every generation overthrows the last to

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Speaker 1: some extent, and otherwise you just get buried in nostalgia.

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Speaker 1: So let's have conversations about what we want to be

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Speaker 1: going forward. There has to be some radical step about

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Speaker 1: goal setting, which the art world hates too. But if

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Speaker 1: we want to have better representation, and we're here right now,

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Speaker 1: then can we at least have a serious conversation about

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Speaker 1: what that might require on the whole the art world,

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Speaker 1: in addition to being this amazing place filled with art

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Speaker 1: and ideas, is also a place suffused with power and money,

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Speaker 1: and hence it is very resistant to change. In order

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Speaker 1: for progress to happen, the trustees, the folks impositions of

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Speaker 1: power need to recognize the reality of these glaring disparities

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Speaker 1: that Julia and Charlotte's data have made so painfully clear.

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Speaker 1: They also have to understand their active role in creating

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Speaker 1: and maintaining these power relations, because the truth is, if

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Speaker 1: we don't change the power dynamics and museums, these numbers

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Speaker 1: will basically stay the same. Death of an Artist is

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Speaker 1: a co production between Pushkin Industries, Something Else and Sony

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Speaker 1: Music Entertainment, Written and hosted by me Helen Mouldsworth. Executive

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Speaker 1: producers are Lizzie Jacobs, Tom Kanegg, lital Malade, Jacob Weisberg

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Speaker 1: and Lucas Werner. Produced by Maria Luisa Tucker, editing by

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Speaker 1: Lizzie Jacobs. Our managing producer is Jacob Smith. Associate producers

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Speaker 1: are Pooge Rue and Eloise Linton, Engineered by Sam Baar.

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Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Pooge Rue. The