The Smithsonian kicks off its new initiative on race and racism with a virtual forum Thursday that brings together curators, researchers and activists to discuss topics including the disparities between races in health care, how biological racism lingers in sports culture and the history of the emotional stress of racism.
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The hour-long event launches “Our Shared Future: Reckoning with our Racial Past,” an ambitious multiyear program that is fully funded by a $25 million grant from Bank of America that will tap into the vast expertise of the Smithsonian to examine the history and legacy of race through conversations, community events and digital content. The Smithsonian created the program last summer, in the wake of social justice protests held in communities across the country. Many museums and cultural organizations responded to the calls for racial justice and equity by presenting more diverse artists, and are revising their collection policies to be more inclusive. The Smithsonian decided to harness its diverse network of museums and experts to foster a national conversation.

The goal, said Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, is nothing short of creating a better America.
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“We want to contribute to making the county better,” Bunch said about the project. “The goal is to find that shared future. The only way to do that is to engage and to debate.

“I really believe that part of the role of the Smithsonian is to define reality and give hope,” he continued. “Giving people the reality — here’s the information, here’s a way to contextualize the moment we are in — you can’t build optimism unless you face the reality of the past, the reality of today. But once you do that you can find ways to find common ground.”

Thursday’s inaugural event, beginning at 7 p.m., will feature three discussions of race, wealth and wellness. Among those expected to participate are Bunch; Damion L. Thomas, curator of sports at the National Museum of African American History and Culture; Louise Seamster, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Iowa who studies race and economic inequality; Sean Sweat, a medical student who rewrote the Hippocratic oath to reflect racial injustice; and Diana Chao, who was in high school when she founded Letters to Strangers, a nonprofit focused on increased access to mental health services and treatment for young people.

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.
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“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.

New York City plans to require visitors and staff members at museums and other cultural institutions to be vaccinated, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday.

“Defeating the Delta variant is the best way to support cultural institutions, because it brings us all back,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference at which he outlined the new requirements. He said that “we believe, if we take these aggressive measure, this is going to encourage a lot of people — audience members and staff alike — to get vaccinated.”

The new vaccine mandate for museums came as the city expanded its “Key to NYC” program, which requires vaccinations in a number of settings, to include “bars, fitness gyms, movie and stage theaters, museums and other indoor venues.” The policy will take effect Tuesday, but enforcement will not begin until Sept. 13 to educate the public and give venues time to adjust.

Children younger than age 12, who are not eligible to be vaccinated, will have to be accompanied by a vaccinated person and will be encouraged to wear masks, city officials said.

“We’re saying get at least the first vaccination — of course the goal is to get everyone fully vaccinated — but get at least the first vaccination and you’ll be able to work or enjoy indoor dining, indoor fitness, indoor entertainment, concerts, movie theaters,” the mayor said as he outlined the requirements. The city plans to conduct a $10 million media campaign to inform the public of the new requirements, according to city officials.
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The 34 museums and arts groups operating in city-owned buildings or on city-owned land — known as members of the Cultural Institutions Group — and other arts organizations had been in discussions over the last few weeks with the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs. There was broad consensus among those arts organizations — as well as others that are not city-owned — in favor of a vaccination mandate.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, named for the American abstract expressionist painter, announced on Wednesday that it had committed $10 million to the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative to help the nation’s visual arts institutions become more energy efficient.
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“We wanted to help U.S. art institutions join the climate fray,” Fred Iseman, the president of the foundation, said in a statement. “There is a void to be filled, a crying need to provide technical know-how and financial support to art institutions to scope their needs, define problems and implement solutions.”

The first round of grants, which start at about $7,300 (the Laguna Art Museum in
Laguna Beach, Calif.) and include a top award of $100,000, totals $5.1 million and
includes 79 institutions in more than 25 states.

Fifteen of the institutions are in New York and are tentpole museums like the
Metropolitan Museum of Art ($50,000). Elsewhere, the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston ($100,000), and smaller museums like the William A. Farnsworth Library
and Art Museum in Rockland, Maine ($29,523), are also recipients.

​The California Indian Museum and Cultural Center in Santa Rosa is using the funds
to create a more resilient power system and cleaner air system that will transform it
into a safe haven for at-risk residents during natural disasters like forest fires
($100,000), while the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico will use a $50,000
grant to help it create an earthquake-safe museum. The Guggenheim ($35,000), the
Museum of Modern Art ($50,000) and the Davis Art Museum at Wellesley College
in Massachusetts ($100,000) are using the grants to help them become carbon
neutral.

​An additional $4.9 million is set to be awarded over the next two years, with the
next grant cycle expected to open in early 2022. A full list of grantees is available at
frankenthalerclimateinitiative.org.

Gorgeous. Serene. You won't believe the rocky life this glorious young woman has led since Botticelli painted her in Italy around 1475. First off, she doesn't look her age. And with a passport that would make jet setters seem slug-a-beds, she's seen parts of Europe that Americans flock to, and ends up right now in an American city that rarely tops European's bucket lists: Cincinnati, Ohio. She's part of the Cincinnati Art Museum exhibition, "Paintings, Politics and the Monuments Men."

You may remember the George Clooney (be still my heart) 2014 film, about art experts, museum curators, others who volunteered to hunt down artworks confiscated by the Nazis in World War II, and hidden away for safekeeping by Hitler and his henchmen.

The movie is streaming these days, should you want to check it out. "It compresses the story," says Peter Jonathan Bell, curator of the Cincinnati exhibition. Hey! It's a movie! (and hey! it's George Clooney!). The curator continues: "Still, it's very good in taking the topic to a broad audience." But I digress.

Back to the Botticelli. The lady, who most scholars believe is Simonetta Vespucci, was the toast of Florence in her day. Painters were besotted by her beauty. When she died at age 22, it is said that Botticelli asked to be buried at her feet. Nearly five centuries after he painted her, Simonetta got caught up in World War II. She'd been bought for Berlin museum collections at the end of the 19th century. In wartime the Nazis moved her first to another part of Berlin to shield her from Allied air raids, then stored her in, believe it or not, a salt mine in central Germany.

"Perfect protection," says curator Bell. "Steady temperature, consistent humidity." (A fascinating part of the story is the care with which the Germans treated the various artworks — those they owned, as well as those they stole. Some were put right next to the country's gold reserve. "That's how valuable they were felt to be," Bell says.) Simonetta, the star of the Cincinnati show, was stored in salt mines near Merkers. That's where General Patton's Third Army discovered her and thousands of other looted artworks.

​Once the Americans took over, Botticelli's beautiful Italian Renaissance lady and various collections were moved to a storage depot in Wiesbaden. The depot was run by Walter Farmer, an architect, soldier and Monument Man from Cincinnati. With this exhibition, the Cincinnati museum is saluting Walter Farmer's role during the war, as well as that hometown veteran's longtime postwar involvement in the arts.

The Walters Art Museum has received a $2.5 million gift from Baltimore art collectors Deborah and Philip English to endow and hire a new curator to specialize in the areas of decorative arts, design, and material culture. In addition, the Englishes committed to donating more than 500 objects in their collection of Majolica to the museum.

The Walters will conduct a national search for this position, known as the Deborah and Philip English Curator of Decorative Arts, Design, and Material Culture.
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“This new position funded by the Englishes gives us the ability to further the study of ceramics like Majolica and other examples of material culture, which expands the types of stories we are able to tell and restores this art to its rightful place in history,” said Julia Marciari-Alexander, Andrea B. and John H. Laporte Director. “We are simply thrilled to have this opportunity to integrate the visionary collection the Englishes have created into the Walters, which stewards one of the most significant collections of ceramics from across the globe and across time in the United States.”

​The English Majolica Collection is one of the largest, most comprehensive, and most significant collections of English and Continental-European Majolica given to any U.S. institution. Majolica, a type of molded earthenware known for its brightly colored lead-based glazes, was widely used throughout Victorian society in the form of tableware, decorative objects, and garden ornaments. After debuting at London’s Great Exhibition of 1851, Majolica quickly became ubiquitous in England and America, with works appearing in museum displays, royal palaces, and in the homes of average citizens. The English Majolica Collection contains both monumental pieces created specifically for exhibitions as well as daily ware.

There’s a major new arts philanthropist on the scene.

​MacKenzie Scott, a novelist who also happens to be the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced today that she has donated a staggering $2.7 billion to 286 organizations across the country—including many affiliated with the arts, such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and United States Artists. 

This marks the third time in 12 months that Scott, whose fortune Forbes recently estimated at $60 billion, has issued a wave of donations worth a combined ten figures. It’s also the first time she has funded arts organizations at scale. (The latest round of recipients also includes racial justice groups, universities, and other organizations.) 

Absent from the list of arts recipients are big names that wealthy donors often favor, such as the Museum of Modern Art or Lincoln Center. Instead, Scott opted to fund smaller, largely BIPOC-led groups including Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas; the Laundromat Project and Recess in Brooklyn, New York; the East Bay Fund For Artists in Oakland, California; El Museo de Arte Puerto Rico in San Juan; and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, Illinois. 

​In another departure from traditional high-dollar cultural philanthropy, Scott provides the funds up front and without restrictions, to be used however the organizations see fit.

“Arts and cultural institutions can strengthen communities by transforming spaces, fostering empathy, reflecting community identity, advancing economic mobility, improving academic outcomes, lowering crime rates, and improving mental health,” Scott wrote in blog post announcing the news, “so we evaluated smaller arts organizations creating these benefits with artists and audiences from culturally rich regions and identity groups that donors often overlook.”

A coalition of philanthropic foundations will devote $125 million over three years to New York State’s arts economy as part of Creatives Rebuild New York, an initiative connected to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to remedy the devastating financial impact of the pandemic. Funded mainly by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with the support of the Ford and Stavros Niarchos Foundations, the program will provide as many as 2,400 artists with guaranteed monthly income and will endow 300 full-time salaried positions across small-to-midsize art organizations statewide.

“The artists whose work helps to sustain us have faced particularly devastating circumstances resulting from unemployment, underemployment, and a lack of predictable paid incomes,” said Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation. “It’s critical for the vibrancy of our cities that we recognize that making art is work, and artists are among our nation’s most dedicated and necessary drivers of our economy.”

The coronavirus has derailed New York’s cultural sector, which before 2020 had accounted for nearly half a million jobs and generated around $120 billion for the state. While many art institutions around the state have reopened in some form, many are working with decimated workforces and budgets. The performing arts industry has taken the hardest blow, with 50 percent of those jobs being lost statewide, 72 percent in New York City, whose arts and recreation sector suffered a 60 percent drop in employment between February and April of last year.

Following the May 6 formation of the City Artist Corps—a $25 million federally backed effort to put artists in New York City back to work—CRNY’s announcement is the latest of several initiatives in the country to experiment with universal basic income, increasingly considered as a viable solution to the virus’s uneven costs; San Francisco implemented a general income pilot program for artists last October.

“These funds will address the financial hardship and combat systemic inequities that have long plagued the sector,” said Emil J. Kang, the program director for arts and culture at the Mellon Foundation. “This is particularly the case for those artists serving small-to-midsized organizations, often led by and serving BIPOC communities.” 
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Helmed by arts administrator Sarah Calderon, most recently the managing director of ArtPlace America, CRNY will on July 1 name its advisory board, to include artists, policymakers, researchers, and nonprofit leaders. Additional funding details will be announced on August 31.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has added a bronze plaque recognizing Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Indigenous Lenape diaspora, on the facade of its Fifth Avenue building. The institution is also working on a land acknowledgement for the Met Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan.

The bronze plaque installed at the Met reads: “The Metropolitan Museum of Art is situated in Lenapehoking, homeland of the Lenape diaspora and historically a gathering and trading place for many diverse Native peoples, who continue to live and work on this island. We respectfully acknowledge and honor all Indigenous communities—past, present, and future—for their ongoing and fundamental relationships to the region.” 

Land acknowledgements are common at institutions in New Zealand and Australia, where presentations of Indigenous art form a key component of certain museums’ programming. But they are less frequent at institutions in the United States.

Few other New York museums have undertaken such a measure. On its website, the New Museum has posted a text that it is situated on “unceded Indigenous land, specifically the homeland of the Lenape peoples,” and in 2018, as part of a posting for a New Red Order performance, the Whitney Museum wrote a similar acknowledgement.

There are signs that the Met is working to alter how it presents Indigenous art. The Met recently unveiled the first major reinstallation of works in “Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection,” an ongoing presentation overseen by the museum’s first full-time curator of Native American art, Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha).

Norby and Sylvia Yount, curator in charge of the American wing, wrote in an article on the Met’s website, “It’s critical for the Met to reckon thoughtfully with our institutional legacy and its ongoing impact on local lands and waters, as well as the lives of the original communities, to evolve into the cultural institution that we aspire and need to be for the region, the nation, and the world.”
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Daniel H. Weiss, president and CEO of the Met, said in a statement, “This acknowledgement is an important part of the Met’s commitment to build and maintain respectful relationships with Indigenous communities. It is also a meaningful reminder to all who walk through the museum’s front doors of the history and legacy of the land on which the Met now sits and the ties to this area that Indigenous communities sustain.”