The Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields has apologized for a job listing seeking a new director who would maintain the museum’s “traditional, core,.
The Times. Arts
Dan Grossman
When I first saw the wording for the job description, I thought back to the time when the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields seemed to be making progress towards creating a truly 21st-century museum.Â
It was July 2019. Kelli Morgan, the museumâs new associate curator, was taking me on a tour of the American galleries. She had just completed a partial rotation of artwork in the galleries. Her most striking choice was to place the painting âKnowledge of the Past is Key to the Future, St. Sebastian,â a work completed in 1986 by prominent African American artist Robert H. Colescott, among artworks from the Gilded Age.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields has apologized for a job listing seeking a new director who would maintain the museum’s “traditional, core,.
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A US museum has apologised for a job listing seeking a new director who would maintain the museum’s “traditional, core, white art audience .
The wording was a bullet point in a six-page job description that also said the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields was working to attract a more diverse audience.
However, museum officials removed the word “white”
at the weekend following outrage, including backlash from guest curators of an exhibit on a Black Lives Matter mural in Indianapolis.
The museum’s director and chief executive, Charles Venable, said the decision to use “white” had been intentional to show the museum wouldn’t abandon its existing audience as it works for more diversity.