LaTanya S. Autry: I wanted to say thank you
for this opportunity to speak with all of you very happy about that, and I try to infuse
my curatorial practice with my personal commitment to social and racial justice. And today I'm
going to highlight five issues that I am really five key issues that I'm working on right
now. So that's my title slide you can find me online our digital spaces as art stuff
matters. So um yeah, I worked as a curatorial fellow at Yale University art gallery for
three years and one of the things I noticed is faculty use a collection a lot, probably
something similar here at the Blanton. And in photography I noticed people would ask
for photos mainly by white male photographers over and over again and I kept thinking what
what is this you know there are other people who make pictures. And part of that was just
what people know what they're used to what they what they were familiar with and if they
did ask for for images by women it would usually be five women and they would be five white
women. So I worked with a student and we collaborated with the library at Yale, you know the Haas
library for art, they were doing a Wikipedia edit-a-thon and it was to put a focus on we
looked at and tried it's problematic it as as it is to identify people who identify as
women that we have in our collection of artists. And then we put a focus on trying to highlight
writing more material, getting stuff on Wikipedia about those artists and then putting that
list together and then we share that list with faculty. And whenever I people would
consult and they would tell me what themes they were interested in I would kind of mention
some other artists that they could also show in their class and over and over again a lot
of people thank me for that information and told me they just were not aware of these
other artists. So that was one thing that we did. I wrote about Kyra Mae Weems when
I did the Wikipedia edit-a-thon and she actually responded on Twitter. She thanked me for adding
to her her page which I was really excited about. Another thing I noticed is Native American
art, people sometimes professors would wana like see certain images of Native American
talking about Native American topics for their course and I've learned very quickly that
we did not have any photography in our collection by a Native American photographers. So Native
Americans where would be featured as subjects but they would not be the producers of the
images. And of course then I start thinking about my own training in photography and then
realized that I had not studied any photography by Native Americans either and so this was
an opportunity for me to go back and think and learn about photographers umm Native American
photographers and consult with people on on the faculty there. And we did try to push
for certain objects to be you know for us to acquire but if you work in a museum you
do know that that's a long kind of process and I was a curatorial fellow I wasn't the
curator of photography at that time they didn't have one and they wanted to wait till they
had someone in place. So we never did get any pictures by by a Native American photographers
but I did try to contextualize images I would put up often people ask for Edward Curtis’s
photographs if you know about them you know I mean in a way they're important images but
they're highly problematic and they connect with a lot of them like very very racist history
that we have genocide. So I would try to offer that information I didn't know about this
artist and I'm showing you Wendy Red Star. I think this is an amazing series of photographs
I just learned about her a couple weeks ago when I was at Brooklyn Museum in New York.
And I realized she's doing this kind of annotation method where she's she's appropriated these
photographs by this is a white male photographer I believe and she's adding information about
the native subjects. And so I thought this was an important thing that I wish I had known
about because it would have been another way to try to bring in information even if it's
through reproductions through books, video all of these kind of materials I feel like
are ways that we can push against the biases that we inherit with our collections. Because
often people say well that's the collection we have you know we don't have the money to
buy things if a donor is not going to give us something else we just have to work with
this. There has to be ways that we can push and challenge those kinds of inherent limited
the racism that we just inherit otherwise we're just perpetuating that system. So the
shirt I'm wearing and as you can see a lot of people who've bought these shirts, museums
are not neutral came about last year in August 2017. I co-created this campaign with a friend
we were we're on on these social media spaces quite a bit. Twitter is actually a big one
for me. What I've collaborated with a lot of folks through that and he had written something
about his frustration. He's Mike Moravsky. He is a director of he is the director of
education and public programs at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. So he's someone I followed
for years and we would often connect through these social media spaces. He had written
something about basically saying museums are not neutral and I thought oh that's great
that should be on a t-shirt because I’m one of these statement t-shirt people. And
we thought let's make it a let's make it a point you know let's make a make a real statement
to do this and basically it's just to refuse that to make a really strong statement of
no. Because I I heard it over and over from people when I was at Yale people kept telling
me things that I was proposing were too political, that the museum had to be neutral and I thought
are you out of your mind. The museum is inherently a political construct; it comes out of colonialists'
enterprise so it's already political. And the fact that I was often the only person
of color in a meeting for years years means that it's not a neutral situation it was always
political. So I'm basically am not taking that from anybody anymore. If you want to
try to bring it, go for it. So this is our campaign and we don't make any of the money,
I mean I bought shirts about a lot of these shirts myself. I have them in a lot of colors
because now it's a uniform for me. And the money goes to different charitable organizations
when we first started for a few months or several months the money all went to Southern
Poverty Law Center, then we did World Kitchen Collective to help out with feeding people
from Hurricane Maria which unfortunately people are still suffering the effects of that And
now we're focused on an organization in Flint called the Community Foundation of Health,
I believe and it's helping with long-term health damages that children are children
who have been affected from the water in Flint. And I'm very proud of this initiative it was
something that really kind of came about is you know a conversation and it is something
that we've sold over 1,200 shirts we've raised $13,000 for charity and it is also part of
a real conversation that's happening and it's encouraging people to speak up in their institutions.
And we see it like we've talked to a lot of people who work in museums but it's also to
encourage other people who don't work there who are who our visitors are people who hate
museums because they see them as very racist spaces. It's I really want to encourage people
to push institutions to see these as their spaces they do not belong to the people who
work in the museum museum where the people who are caretakers of the objects but we don't
own the objects they belong to everybody. You can find things about the conversation
you can find them if you're on twitter the hashtag museums are not neutral that's an
ongoing discussion. There's just so much stuff is on there I follow it sometimes I don't
even respond to all of them but I do when people say little things like sometimes right
back. But it's ongoing and it's really global it's a lot of folks here in the US but also
throughout Europe, South America, Australia so a lot of people are following this hashtag
now and our have had these shirts all over the place. So social justice and museums resource
list is something I started back in 2015, to make kind of a bibliography to make this
information just out there for the world so it's basically the open Google Doc any of
you your friends whoever everybody is welcome to review it to share it with friends to add
to it. I go on and try to keep checking and editing and cleaning it up because sometimes
people you know things get a little messy in there and I have a lot of copies of this
in case somebody it was going to be horrible and try to delete it but so there there is
a safety net with it. It's over 40 pages long. There's a lot of stuff a lot of things should
be on here that aren't on there. There's a focus on as you can see activism and museums
there's a focus on diversity inclusion that kind of language. Which sometimes I actually
find very problematic but you know the general concepts there seem okay there's articles
that you can find about that decolonization just a real range of things case studies from
things that have happened at different institutional controversies and so forth. The art of black
dissent this is something I'm very proud of this is something I started I guess it started
in 2015. The discussions for it this is actually one of the best things I've done in my entire
life and and I think it's great but also makes me just kind of horrified by what I'm doing
with my life God I should be doing better things. So this is a dialog program that I
started with a friend, my friend Gabriella Svenningsen she still works at Yale University
art gallery where we work together and both in the photography department. And basically
it became something or you know in 2014 like probably many of you I watched so many black
people die, and I saw it on social media and it was horrifying. And in December later that
year there was a group of colleagues of people who work in museums there were a group of
people who work in museums who basically said you know more people in museums should be
doing something instead of just like all of the stuff is happening in the world and we're
just there's nothing happening in museums we're not making any kind of statement. I
came up with this idea and it took a lot it took a long time to get it going basically
had a lot of pushback where people felt that it was too political to talk about race in
the gallery. Which again was ridiculous we at that point we're focused on objects from
the collection and we had very good response I think some people are afraid that people
are gonna be angry all kinds of fears basically worse timing the whole progress of doing this
we were only really able to do it once there were a series of protests that happened on
campus at Yale also in 2015. Soon as that happened to make national news I was invited
to do the program. The program happened in 2016. One public program but we did it several
times for classes so for five more or five or six times for classes at Yale. And then
we have such a great response that my friend and I Gabrielle and I decided to seek grant
funding and bring this out into the public, so we go to high schools and to libraries
and now we use our own set of art so we don't have any and stuff any Glenn Ligons or Adrian
Pipers because I don't have money but we we have our own collection. We have a lot of
Zines and stuff I like that you're showing at artist books and stuff like that so. I'm
not sure I go quickly cuz I have only a few more seconds and I want to really highlight
this. I think there are really important steps that we can all take as individuals individual
steps and I would be happy to share this slide with you. In case I push the button too quickly
and you're not able don't write these things down. But a lot of it is about educating yourselves
all of us unfortunately I mean I would say a lot of us don't know myself for sure as
good as our education have been you can go to school and get all this advanced training
and yet still not know so much because our schools I mean all of this stuff is just entrenched
with racism. See I didn't meet my own clock okay so a lot of it is about educating yourself
I think we should all try to break out and really think like artists to not try to follow
established conventions, to really think about building collaborations with folks. And let
me see what else I really wanna say Oh critical practice I really got to get into more kind
of a critique thinking about what you're doing being using a critical thinking skills. And
really the people in the museum should be doing that about their own work and thinking
about really challenging established structures and getting out and telling your story and
publishing it. It’s really one of the main strengths we have is to tell the truth and
it really doesn't happen that much. Of museums then there's what we can do as an institution
there's an intersectional anti-racism kind of anti-oppression set of steps that we can
do so diversity fellowships is a really big important thing and often that's where people
kind of stop with their conversation it's like okay you know that's it we need to get
more people color in these museums. That is a good thing that is important and and there's
all these other things we can be doing looking at our hiring practices. Talk about staff
training because really the culture in a lot of these institutions it is a very racist
culture that's within it's just embedded within the institution so to create kind of spaces
where they're actually where people want to work. There are people of color that's important
to really to break to break things apart creating productive mentorship opportunities. Changing
our mission statements making it actually important to your mission that really happens
in the big one that's actually couched here in the middle but should probably be at the
top. Its funding criteria because we're really not talking about anything if we're talking
about trying to change and really do anti oppression and anti-racism. If you're not
really making that part of a funding criteria it's not going to happen it can't just be
on the goodwill of folks so there's some other really wonderful things of course teaching
next generations that's one of the great things that museums are not neutral we've been invited
to go out and talk with college campuses to Museum Studies courses public humanities things
like that. And I actually really love that because I feel like that's you know that's
the next people coming up in the field and it's a really important kind of space to be
in and of course adopting more community centered approaches to our work thank you. [Applause]
