Where Does the Art Institute of Chicago Compare With Other Museums
Art Constitute of Chicago Ends a Docent Program, and Sets Off a Backlash
The museum'due south decision to replace its plan for volunteer educators with one that "responds to bug of course and income equity" has drawn criticism.
Similar many museums effectually the country, the Fine art Found of Chicago has been trying to forge closer ties with the racially and economically diverse city information technology serves. Museum officials decided that 1 area in need of an overhaul was its 60-year-old plan of volunteer educators, known as docents, who greet school groups and lead tours.
Then concluding month the board overseeing the program sent a alphabetic character to the museum'southward 82 active docents — well-nigh of whom were white older women — informing the volunteers that their program was being ended. The letter said that the museum would stage in a new model relying on paid educators and volunteers "in a mode that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of course and income equity, and does not require fiscal flexibility to participate."
The move has erupted into the latest cultural flash point as museums effectually the country wrestle with making their staffs, boards and programming more diverse.
The docents — longtime, defended volunteers who know the Institute and its collections intimately — lamented the determination. The Chicago Tribune denounced the move in an editorial headlined "Shame on the Fine art Plant for summarily canning its volunteer docents." Conservative media decried the plan every bit discrimination confronting white people and an case of what the Federalist chosen "the cult of wokeness." Infowars, the site founded past the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, ran an article about it.
James Rondeau, the Establish's manager, said in an interview that the docents program had long been viewed as logistically unsustainable, and that the Institute had stopped adding new volunteers 12 years ago. He said that the recent vitriol had taken a astringent toll on the institution and its staff.
"Conspicuously nosotros were not prepared for this to get a discussion of identity politics," he said. "Nosotros are merely focused on our mission."
In the Sept. 3 letter ending the program, Veronica Stein, the executive director of learning and public engagement for the museum'southward Woman'due south Lath, which supports education activities, said that the museum wanted to "rebuild our program from the ground up."
The new plan calls for hiring paid educators — Ms. Stein invited the volunteers to use for those positions — and then developing a new program over the side by side few years. In 2023, she wrote, "unpaid volunteer educators volition be reintroduced via a redesigned model" that includes updated protocols for "recruitment, application, training, and assessment." She offered the departing docents museum memberships.
Ms. Stein in an interview said she had been taken ashamed by the sharply negative reactions. "The violent, weaponizing language an overwhelming number of people are using in messages and emails to describe the museum'southward evolution has been startling, and if I'thou being honest, scary," she said. "As a issue, the museum now has increased security. Our frontline staff have already experienced erratic and harmful behavior. Our goal now is getting the facts out and keeping our staff safe."
Paradigm
A number of museums accept been trying to accost how to get more people of color into the hiring pipeline, in part by removing financial barriers. Organizations like the Minnesota Alliance for Volunteer Advocacy encourage nonprofit and regime organizations "to engage volunteers who reverberate the racial and ethnic multifariousness of the communities they serve." And there have been widespread calls for salary reforms, since systems that rely on unpaid volunteers and interns tend to favor those who tin can afford to piece of work for little to nil.
The question of diversifying and training docents has come up up a number of times in contempo years. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston publicly committed to "changing protocols and procedures for frontline staff and guards, articulating our expectations for visitor, staff and volunteer behavior, and enhancing ongoing training for all staff and volunteers" afterwards seventh graders and a teacher said they had been subjected to racist remarks by staff and other visitors during a 2019 field trip. And a 2020 article in Slate headlined "Museums Have a Docent Trouble" described what it chosen "the struggle to train a mostly white, unpaid tour guide corps to talk nearly race."
The docents at institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Fine art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston are all volunteers. "For many years we have worked concertedly to attract a diverse corps of docents," said Gary Tinterow, the Houston museum's managing director, "and we look forward to continued diversification of staff and volunteers."
At the Met, 400 of the museum's 1,000 volunteers are docents, whose program "brings great value to our establishment" and "will continue to evolve," said Daniel H. Weiss, the president and chief executive. "Information technology is incumbent on all institutions," he added, "to ensure that their programs and policies are aligned with their values and responsive to current needs."
The Art Institute's docents council has urged the museum to revisit its determination and consider alternatives.
"We agree that the museum, from top to bottom, must better reflect the Chicago area community that it serves," the quango wrote in a letter to Mr. Rondeau terminal month. "We too believe that our knowledge, enthusiasm, and commitment tin contribute to achieving our mutual goal — the museum'due south and ours — of making the museum a more welcome identify for all."
The Chicago Tribune editorial described the dismissal of the docents as "a callous move in a cruel time in America" and called on Mr. Rondeau to "apologize and find some kind of compromise that does not involve the spectacle of long-serving devotees of a great museum left to experience like they've been put out with the gift-store trash."
Robert M. Levy, the Art Institute's chairman, responded with a defense of the decision in The Tribune, writing that officials were taking "thoughtful and measured steps" to pursue "a new national art education model."
He wrote that "the decision of many in our community to view this as an indictment of their ain identity" was "misaligned and disregards the driving force behind the program: to better serve Chicago-area students and visitors and foster lifelong relationships with art."
Only the controversy has inappreciably abated. "In the name of what they call civic-minded diversity, the museum has thrown overboard a group of people who actually encounter it as their duty to help the public empathise art," said an essay in The Wall Street Journal. "That's not very civic-minded, is it?"
Ms. Stein said that the museum was simply trying to rebuild the programme, and complained that the museum's motivations and plans had been mischaracterized. "We tin lose focus on the amazing opportunity nosotros have to pay educators," she said, "especially when we live in a society where that is not the standard."
An advisory council that will guide the museum through the procedure will include docents, she added.
But Gigi Vaffis, the docent council president, said she and her colleagues "were surprised, disappointed and dismayed" by Ms. Stein's letter.
"Regardless of our historic period, regardless of our gender, regardless of our income level, we know the Fine art Institute's collection extremely well and are highly trained to facilitate arts engagement across diverse audiences," said Ms. Vaffis, who has worked as a volunteer for about 20 years. "Our goal is to facilitate tour conversations that are every bit dynamic as the audiences nosotros serve.
"We accept such value, cognition, feel and passion — I wish the museum had recognized what we bring to the table," she continued. "I wish they would reconsider and bring us back."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/arts/design/chicago-art-institute-docents.html