MUSEUM TRUSTEE ASSOCIATION
  • Home
  • About us
    • Mission
    • Board of Directors
    • Current Members >
      • Institutional Members
      • Individual Members
    • Contact
  • Membership
    • Benefits
    • Types >
      • Institutions
      • Patrons
      • Friends
    • Member Spotlights >
      • San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts
      • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
      • Greensboro History Museum
      • Mingei International Museum
      • Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
      • Heard Museum
      • Maryland Center for History & Culture
      • Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens
      • Lehigh University Art Galleries
  • News
  • Events
    • Chicago Fall Forum 2023
  • Resources
    • MTA On-Demand
    • Templates for Trustees
    • Tips for Trustees
    • Blackbaud Webinar Series
    • Member Resource Library
    • IDEA Resources & Information
  • Donate
  • Patron Weekend

Smithsonian Begins Two-Year Racial Justice Initiative

8/26/2021

0 Comments

 
By Sarah Bahr. From The New York Times. Published 8/25/2021
When Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, announced last year that the organization had received a $25 million gift from Bank of America, he envisioned an initiative that would create safe spaces in communities across the nation where Americans could gather to discuss the country’s racial past.

The result, “Our Shared Future: Reckoning With Our Racial Past,” a two-year series of online and in-person events, will kick off Thursday in Los Angeles with a virtual summit meeting that will focus on income and health care inequality and include subjects ranging from early race science to vaccine distribution. The initial event will be livestreamed at oursharedfuture.si.edu, starting at 7 p.m. Eastern.

“We can’t solve the problems of race in America ourselves,” Bunch said in a phone conversation on Monday. “But we can give the public the tools to stimulate those conversations to help people understand race beyond Black and white.”

The organization is planning conferences, town halls and immersive pop-up experiences in communities across the country to allow people to share their experiences and increase their understanding of the legacy of race and racism. Bunch said the goal is to encourage conversations among people who might not otherwise cross paths.

“We hope the Smithsonian can be a trusted place where people with a diversity of political opinions can engage with each other,” he said.

Museums nationwide are reckoning with race in their collections, including how to diversify their historically white holdings and how to display artifacts of traumatic periods in the country’s history, such as Ku Klux Klan robes, with proper context. But the Smithsonian wanted to take the conversation beyond museum walls, Bunch said.

“In many ways, it’s an initiative about race,” he said. “But it’s also an initiative about the different ways the Smithsonian can do our work moving forward.”

Though arrangements are in flux because of the pandemic, the Smithsonian does plan to dispatch a video team to events including the annual Farm Aid Festival, to be held this year in Hartford, Conn., on Sept. 25, in the hope of gathering oral histories from people about their experiences of race in America.
​
“We want to make sure, as we talk about the grand issues of race and wellness, we reduce it to a human scale,” Bunch said.
Continue Reading
0 Comments

$4 Million Grant Will Promote Board Diversity at Museums

1/25/2019

0 Comments

 

By Nicole Wallace. From Chronicle of Philanthropy. Posted on 1/15/19. 

Picture
The last museum-board leadership survey conducted by the American Alliance of Museums uncovered a staggering statistic: About 46 percent of American museums have all-white boards of directors.

But the alliance hopes that figure will change for the better soon. Over the next three years, the alliance will receive $4 million to bolster board diversity in a push to make museums more accessible and inclusive. The Ford, Andrew W. Mellon, and Alice L. Walton foundations joined forces to award the grant.

In the more than 20 years that museums talked about the importance of diversity and inclusion, the number of people of color serving on boards has barely budged, says Laura Lott, the alliance’s chief executive. She says that’s a real problem.

Read More
0 Comments

African American Artists Are More Visible Than Ever. So Why Are Museums Giving Them Short Shrift?

9/20/2018

0 Comments

 

By Juliette Halperin and Charlotte Burns. From artnet news. Posted on 9/20/18. 

Picture
As a child growing up in Alabama in the 1950s and ‘60s, Jack Whitten was not permitted inside his segregated local museum in Birmingham. Now, the late artist is the subject of a major exhibition at the Met Breuer in New York. Its title, aptly, is “Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture 1963–2017” (on view through December 2).

As recently as 1992, a proposed tour of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Jean-Michel Basquiat retrospective was canceled when no other museums came forward to take it. Last spring, one of Basquiat’s paintings sold for $110.5 million, becoming the most expensive work by an American artist ever sold at auction.


 


Read More
0 Comments
    ​The Museum Trustee Association views its mission of enhancing the effectiveness of museum trustees as educational and collaborative. As a group of past and current museum board members, we do not see ourselves as a policy-setting organization but rather as a source of information to equip Museum Trustees as they implement field-wide best practices in all of their governance affairs. The sharing of articles and opinion pieces on MTA social media and the News page of our website does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by MTA, its employees, or its board members. 

    Categories

    All
    And Inclusion
    Art And Law
    Art And Politics
    Art Market
    Board Governance
    Communication
    Data
    Deaccessioning
    DEAI
    Decolonize
    Democracy
    Design
    Diversity
    Endowment
    Equity
    Foundation
    Funding
    Government
    Grants
    MTA Member Museum
    Museum Insights
    Museum News
    Philanthropy
    Restitution
    Social Impact
    Social Justice
    Strategy
    Tax Exempt

    Archives

    October 2022
    June 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    November 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018

    RSS Feed

SIGN UP FOR MTA E-NEWS

Members of the MTA automatically receive the association's monthly emailed newsletter, MTA E-News, and may also take advantage of access to past issues in our archives here.
Donate

BECOME A MEMBER

Institutional Membership
Patron Membership
Friend Membership

​CONTACT MTA

Museum Trustee Association
211 East Lombard Street, Suite 179
Baltimore, MD 21202-6102
410-402-0954
​
​
Contact Us
© Copyright 2018 Museum Trustee Association. All Rights Reserved.
  • Home
  • About us
    • Mission
    • Board of Directors
    • Current Members >
      • Institutional Members
      • Individual Members
    • Contact
  • Membership
    • Benefits
    • Types >
      • Institutions
      • Patrons
      • Friends
    • Member Spotlights >
      • San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts
      • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
      • Greensboro History Museum
      • Mingei International Museum
      • Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
      • Heard Museum
      • Maryland Center for History & Culture
      • Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens
      • Lehigh University Art Galleries
  • News
  • Events
    • Chicago Fall Forum 2023
  • Resources
    • MTA On-Demand
    • Templates for Trustees
    • Tips for Trustees
    • Blackbaud Webinar Series
    • Member Resource Library
    • IDEA Resources & Information
  • Donate
  • Patron Weekend