Author: Dominique T. Marcial (Page 6 of 9)

Censorship and Expression: The Challenge off the Provocative in Museums.

When is provocative too provocative? This past week, three pieces were pulled from the Guggenheim Museum’s show “Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World”  due to protests from animal rights activists concerned about the portrayal of animals in this exhibit. The works pulled from the exhibit depict eight Pitbull’s on eight treadmills trying to fight each other, pigs engaged in intercourse, and insects, snakes, and small lizards underneath a lamp.

The removals from the Guggenheim follow the removal of Scaffold, a sculpture opposing capital punishment, drawing from controversial hangings in U.S. history from the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, as well as protests at the Whitney Museum of Art surrounding Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket,  portraying  Emmitt Till’s mutilated body.

The censorship vs expression battle between museums, artists, and the public is nothing new. Marcel Duchamp faced criticism for his found object art in 1917, and Picasso’s 1937 mural depicting the massacre of a Basque village was censored in the 1960s because Americans thought it was insensitive to Vietnam.

Artists have a right to express, but does a museum have the right to display works that may cause harm to others or that causs harm to the subjects of the work (in the Guggenheim case the animals)? If museums are held in the public trust, they should listen to the responses of the audience. Yet at the same time, museums are not neutral institutions. Whether implicitly or explicitly they push social, political, and even economic themes. The issue of censorship becomes clear when the staff, faculty, and museum goers safety comes into question. If the public is threatening violence over an exhibit, pieces need to be removed.

Perhaps in the case of the Guggenheim the works were correctly removed because they display physical harm done to animals, which is not good art. The animals were actually in these perilous situations to be photographed. Yet in cases such as Dana Shutz’s at the Whitney, she was not putting any creature in physical harm with her paintings, rather members of social activist groups did not feel she had authority as a white woman to paint a black man’s brutal  death. In the cases of censorship how does a museum weight physical vs. emotional harm in their decision to remove a piece?

As with most controversy, there is no clear answer to the expression v. censor debate. Yet I do feel that any physical harm or violence incited over the pieces in a museum should trigger the removal of the object so as to protect the workers and visitors. These protests against artwork may begin to pop up more frequently as social media fuels social protests and change. Museums will need to figure out a means to deal with the bold and provocative while remaining safe institutions for the public.

Forging your Own Career Path in the Museum World

            As museum professionals, most of us are aware that our career paths do not follow a straight line. Unlike the majority of the corporate sector, where companies may provide a straight trajectory from entry, to associate, to manager, etc, career routes in the museum world may feel spotty and unconnected. There is often not a straight path to promotion and mobility, and it is up to us as independent professionals to determine where our next career step lies, whether that be expanding our roles in a current institution of employment, or transferring to another museum entirely to fulfill our goals.

Here are a few points to chew upon when considering how to plan your museum career.

      To begin, create a mission statement. What are your burning desires for your career? What are you passionate about? And what are the goals you want to reach, not only for yourself, but for others through your work? Write down these goals into a mission statement, and then just as a museum works continuously toward its mission statement, you too must vow to work within the frame of your mission statement. Read your mission over and over and stick to it. Put it like glue into your brain and analyze how your career motives and tasks fit into your mission.

      Grab some friends! The power of the people you surround yourself with is extraordinary. Meet with other museum professionals who share like-minded interests to discuss your career path and how each of you can support and learn from one another. Talking with people is also a great way to network!!! So, if you are on the hunt for a new job to fulfill that mission of yours, surround yourself with positive museum people and talk.

      Connect the dots. A lot of times it is easier to connect the dots in life in a retrospective view, whether that be for a career, relationship, etc. So, take stock of your dots. How did you come to be in the career position you are in? What would you change about the past career steps you took? How can you learn from these patterns to further your career in a direction you want to go? Connect those dots and learn from them so you can move forward in your career mission.

  Don’t be afraid to make a pivot. If you’re working in development, but long to work in education(or vice versa), make your mission, network, and connect those dots to make it happen. We all have such individualized career paths in the museum field, so we have to make our own individualized plans to achieve our personal goals. Whether it is moving to a new museum to start a new job, or expanding the current job you are in, make the path and stick to it with conviction.