How one S.F. institution is trying to overcome ‘museums so white’ paralysis
An SF institution is hoping to usher in a new era for fine art in San Francisco — with Black audiences, artists and stakeholders at the forefront.
Safiya Jihan Adams (left), Natasha Becker, Sherri McMullen and Rosie Williams at the de Young Museum. Photo: Samantha Tyler Cooper
As part of REP CO’s mission to disseminate and elevate the stories of our subjects, we are proud to partner with The San Francisco Chronicle on the publication of this piece. You can find this story, as well as so many others over on their site!
The "museums so white" reckoning spared no San Francisco institution. After the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, nearly every industry was forced to face the ways racism has steadfastly survived within its walls.
Art museums were especially under scrutiny. As arbiters of cultural value, they have long helped maintain the supremacy of white, Western influence, while bulking up both their prestige and coffers thanks to the countless artifacts that have been acquired through violent colonization.
Then there was the fact that many people of color felt that these institutions were simply not designed for them. They didn’t feel welcome inside their local museums, as employees or patrons. And while countless statements, apologies, pledges and promises were shared on social media by San Francisco’s major museums, none had clearly demonstrated what substantive change might look like.
But behind the scenes, internal changemakers at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which includes the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor, had been rethinking not only what’s on their walls, but also how they collect, whom they hire and how they cater to their audiences.
That shift was made most visible on a summer evening at the de Young Museum, but only after the daytime crowds were ushered out at closing time.
It was quarter to 6 p.m. on a Thursday when another, smaller crowd arrived. Dressed in their finest outfits, the party of just under 100 people included tech giants, entrepreneurs, musicians, fashion designers, art collectors and local politicians. It wouldn’t have been unlike the countless other private donor events at the museum, except for a few stark differences: This crowd was almost entirely Black. What’s more, when they were feted in the Hamon Tower, they sipped wine from Black-owned winery McBride Sisters amongst arrangements created by Black-owned florist Saint Flora, while wearing stunning dresses and suits by Black designers.
Black-owned winery McBride Sisters provided the wine during a special event at the de Young Museum in August. Photo: Samantha Tyler Cooper
“This event is a first of its kind, and it’s a big deal,” said attendee Akilah Cadet, founder and CEO of the DEI consulting firm Change Cadet dressed in floor-skimming, rainbow-colored Christopher John Rogers gown.
Nearby, Oakland singer Goapele posed for a photo with long-time Warriors DJ Derrick Sharp. Celebrity chef Tanya Holland and California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris sampled veggie sushi.
“I wanted people to feel free. a type of freeness that is unexpected and different and real, and speaks to how Black people like to party.” -rosie williams
“Tonight is an opportunity to celebrate Black leadership and joy and Black excellence — an excellence that is not necessarily just hitting the top of your career, but also contributing and being present and putting your stake in this space,” said Rosie Williams, FAMSF’s Major Gifts Officer and the driving force behind the special event held last August.
Notably, Williams curated the evening’s playlist to include half a dozen tracks from Beyoncé’s new “Renaissance” album, “About Damn Time” by Lizzo, to East Bay rapper Too Short’s “Blow The Whistle.”
“I wanted people to feel free,” she said, “a type of freeness that is unexpected and different and real, and speaks to how Black people like to party.”
“Celebrating Black Art, Fashion, and Activism” was the topic of the evening’s panel discussion, which featured fashion heavyweight Sherri McMullen, owner of McMullen boutique, and FAMSF curator Natasha Becker, with tech executive and content curator Safiya Jihan Adams as moderator. The group acknowledged that while Black excellence may have been the overarching theme of the evening, it was Black representation and collaboration that made it happen.
Rosie Williams, FAMSF’s major gifts officer who spearheaded a Black-culture-focused celebration at the de Young, talks with Oakland singer Goapele at the event. Photo: Samantha Tyler Cooper
***
In December 2020, FAMSF hired Becker as its curator of African art — making her the institution's second Black curator in its 126-year history, and the first for African art. A few months later, Williams joined the development team as the first Black gift officer. Courtney Jones was then brought on in January of this year as the museum’s first Diversity and Inclusion manager. That same month, FAMSF announced Bakari Adams as the newest member of its Board of Trustees.
These roles, along with a handful of other hires over the last 24 months, have put Black representation in almost every department at FAMSF’s two museums, from curatorial and education to marketing, development and IT. In less than two full years, Black representation amongst the operational staff rose from 1.5% to 5.9%.
“For me, just being surrounded by people who feel and share and are excited about the same things, it's like the hug of Blackness,” said Becker. “I am from South Africa, where white people are 10% of the population. So, for me, just being surrounded by Black people and Black culture — there’s something about that that is just so comforting, and so fun and familiar. And that is what we want people to feel, that they belong in the museum.”
Experiencing that “hug of Blackness” in the workplace is still a somewhat new feeling for Shaquille Heath, senior manager of communications. Heath has been with FAMSF for four years; some of that time spent as the museum’s sole Black employee within museum operations (as opposed to frontline workers such as security and visitor experience). Having worked with FAMSF before the idea of an antiracism initiative was raised, she is still adjusting to the idea that the institution she thought she knew so well can actually change.
“For me, just being surrounded by people who feel and share and are excited about the same things, it's like the hug of Blackness.” -Natasha Becker
“I'll admit, I don't think an event like this could have happened at the museums before now, and the fact that it did shows me how much progress has been made,” Heath said. “Since 2020, I've seen firsthand the change in staff demographics at the museums, and what that has meant for the community.
“While I know that hiring Black staff is only the first step of the work, having more Black staff, particularly working on the executive side of operations, means that the thoughts, expertise and experiences of Black people have had a real chance to show up throughout the museum. It means that there are multiple voices who can advocate for Black inclusion in a variety of ways.”
“I'll admit, I don't think an event like this could have happened at the museums before now, and the fact that it did shows me how much progress has been made.”
-Shaquille Heath (left), pictured with Natasha Becker
Others also emphasize that diversity in hiring is just a small step on the long path toward equity.
“Museums themselves are colonial institutions, and now there is an opportunity to make a positive and impactful change,” said Jones. “But for me, it's really about being intentional. A lot of conversations around diversity now are about numbers and stats and demographics, and that is really important. But what is equally as important is that your staff and your visitors actually have a sense of belonging.”
Becker added that without this sense of belonging, “these new hires often leave quietly after six months,” referring to the swift turnover she’s observed at major museums around the country. She, however, is hopeful that her tenure will be lengthy, and is clear-eyed about her responsibilities at the museum.
“Museums themselves are colonial institutions, and now there is an opportunity to make a positive and impactful change.” -Courtney Jones
“A large part of all our jobs is to advocate, all the time — to work to convince someone why we think this or that is important,” said Becker. “Advocacy work is maybe 20% of the work we do. None of us had any illusions when being interviewed for these jobs that that is what you hired us to do, so we are here to do it.”
But that awareness doesn’t make the task any easier, and Becker understands why many don’t end up finding a long-term home within these institutions.
“It's surprising to me sometimes how challenging the conversations are,” she continued. “But if you have been in the predominantly, overwhelming white institutional context, you have no history of collaborating with Black people. You have no history of talking to and working together. There is a kind of cultural clash we are constantly trying to overcome.”
Considering this clash and helping her co-workers navigate it is Jones' full-time job. She is unapologetically frank about its roots and resourceful when it comes to solutions.
“We have to ask: How does white supremacy culture show up in our organization and how can we shift past that?” she said. “For an institution that has never taken these steps, there is a bit of resistance, but there is also an opportunity to experiment and be creative and intentional with what we do.”
Temi Adamolekun, founder of Pembroke PR (left), and Courtney Jones, FAMSF’s manager of diversity and inclusionPhoto: Samantha Tyler Cooper / Samantha Tyler Cooper
The idea for a celebration “just because” was one such experiment.
“When you try to bring in new communities and different voices and different kinds of leadership, you have to be unorthodox and do things a little differently,” said Williams, who came up with the idea for the August fete. She was urged on by Bakari and his wife Safiya Jihan Adams, who couldn’t help noticing a glaring omission in the guest list when she arrived at FAMSF’s annual gala in October.
“I could count the number of Black people in that room on my hands,” recalled Jihan Adams, who noted that work by Black artists makes up just more than 1% of the pieces exhibited in the top museums in the U.S. ”There is no collectivist savior who is coming. It's about individual actions that we can all take. By being intentional and committed, we can drive change."
So Jihan Adams and Bakari, who was encouraged to join FAMSF’s board by current member and longtime equity advocate Valerie Coleman Morris, started brainstorming with Williams on ways to get a wider variety of people into the museum. The result was the August event, which included a private viewing of “The Obama Portraits Tour,” followed by a panel featuring McMullen, Becker, Jihan Adams and Adams. Topics discussed ranged from art as activism and the state of Black fashion to the monumental work that still needs to be done in art museums around the country — FAMSF included.
The evening’s discussion, moderated by Safiya Jihan Adams and featuring Natasha Becker and Sherri McMullen, took place in front of the Obama portraits. Photo: Samantha Tyler Cooper
Over the last few years, hard conversations about race have been taking place within museums across the Bay Area, with some institutions forced to have those conversations more publicly than others.
During the summer of 2020, a social media misstep by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in response to the killing of George Floyd inspired Black employees and artists to speak out about incidents of racism and other forms of bias at the museum. Others, like the Oakland Museum of California — which has long been viewed as one of the most progressive in the country when it comes to racial equity — admitted that the pandemic year brought an “internal reckoning.”
In early June 2020, OMCA director and CEO Lori Fogarty recalled that as she was speaking on diversity and equity at the American Alliance of Museums conference, her own staff was demanding that her museum “see, acknowledge and be held accountable for the inequities in our own institution … such as a lack of Black people in key roles, particularly within the curatorial ranks.”
In response, over the subsequent six months, the museum held more than two dozen workshops with employees on topics like the organization’s business model, pay equity and the structure of the institution. By April 2021, the decision was made to cut staff by 15%, while at the same time giving 22 entry-level staff members raises of roughly $9 an hour as part of the museum’s commitment to pay equity.
“This organizational redesign is intended to make the museum more relevant to our community, and is consistent with our vision for our social impact,” Fogarty said in a statement following the reorganization announcement.
Two years later, more changes are visible. Most Bay Area institutions have added extensive sections on their websites dedicated to outlining their strategic DEAI plans and measuring progress as best as they can. They’ve been more transparent about those changes too, making staff demographics public. (At SFMOMA, staff that identify as Black make up 4.75%. For OMCA, it's 9%.)
Yet, beyond the numbers, the level of confidence and candidness when speaking about that progress varies widely.
At FAMSF, there was a distinct enthusiasm and frankness coming from the staff, and at the August event, a palpable sense of pride of place. Becker believes there was no more symbolic place to gather and talk that night: “We were in front of the Obama portraits, which are so much about self fashioning, and portraiture as a representation of power and identity.”
Safiya Jihan Adams embraces Sherri McMullen. Photo: Samantha Tyler Cooper
Williams and Jihan Adams both said they hope events like this, catering specially to the Black community, will become a regular part of museum programming.
There will be many excuses to celebrate in the coming months. On Dec. 17, the de Young plans to unveil its newly renovated and reinstalled galleries dedicated to the museum’s expanded African art program, led by Becker. The inaugural show will be “Lhola Amira: Facing the Future,” the South African artist’s first solo exhibition in the U.S., which will be on view through December 2023.
“It doesn’t always have to be so serious and it doesn’t always have to be so political,” said Becker. “Just the fact that we were all in the room together and there was joy and love and celebration and interest and curiosity is all that matters. This kind of visibility helps us to keep the door open … and then push it open a little wider.”