Media

Curating Inequality: The Link between Cultural Reproduction and Race in the Visual Arts*

Andria Blackwood, Department of Geography, Kent State University David Purcell, Department of Sociology, Kent State University

Although the U.S. population is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, research indicates that minority participation in the arts continues to decline. This article addresses the racial disparity of public art museum attendance by examining the role of the art museum curator and the process by which concepts of race are reproduced within the space of the public art museum. Utilizing Bourdieu’s theories of cultural reproduc- tion, social space, and symbolic power as a preliminary framework of inquiry, we exam- ine the concept of whiteness as privileged social construct. Through face-to-face in- depth interviews with museum curators, we investigate the means by which the domi- nant cultural narrative of whiteness is maintained through the preferences, decisions, and social interactions of curators. We draw upon critical white studies, a part of critical race theory, to underline the manner in which whiteness presents itself as a position of domi- nance. Our findings show that whiteness is maintained through the process of exclusion by presenting the white cultural narrative as both ordinary and invisible.

Introduction

While the United States is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse (Passel and Cohn 2008; U.S. Census Bureau 2010), minority participation in the arts is progressively declining (American Alliance of Museums [AAM] 2010; National Endowment for the Arts 2009a). The importance of civic institutions such as public art museums cannot be understated. National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) research reveals a profound link between museum attendance and a variety of community involvement, including volun- teerism, sports participation, collaborative art-making, and family attendance of out-of-school performances (NEA 2009b). Museums have been shown to forge bridges between social groups and also foster greater understanding of cultures and beliefs (Thea 2009). Moreover, the environment of civic institu- tions such as museums has the ability to cultivate dialogue, engaging as civic agents to promote general public discourse on such issues as the changing concepts of race, ethnicity, politics, and culture (AAM 2010; Putnam 2001; Tepper 2011). Thus, it is important to examine the relationship between race and the reproduction of culture within the public sphere of the museum in

Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 84, No. 2, May 2014, 238–263 © 2014 Alpha Kappa Delta: The International Sociology Honor Society DOI: 10.1111/soin.12030

order to better facilitate active, positive, and productive engagement between disparate groups.

The majority of research on patronage of the arts focuses on the demo- graphics, preferences, and habits of museum visitors, and the social, cultural, and generational changes that have taken place within American society and their effects on art museum attendance (AAM 2010; NEA 2009a). However, there appears to be a gap in the literature as to the role curators may play in influencing the demographics of museum participation. Thus, we focus on the role of the public art museum curator in regard to issues of racial and cultural reproduction. We ask: how can the role of curator influence public participation in regard to both white and minority populations?

Curators are the institutionally acknowledged experts within the field of art and are involved in a variety of professional capacities (Ramirez 1996). The Code of Ethics for Curators (American Alliance of Museums 2009a) describes the many professional duties of a curator, including conducting origi- nal research; developing new scholarship that contributes to the advancement of the body of knowledge within their field(s) of expertise; developing and organizing exhibitions; assuming responsibility for the overall care and devel- opment of the collection; representing their institution in the media, at public gatherings, and at professional conferences and seminars; remaining current in all state, national, and international laws as they pertain to the objects in the museum collection; advocating for and participating in the formulation of insti- tutional policies and procedures for the care of the collection that are based on accepted standards and best practices; and making recommendations for acquiring and deaccessioning pieces within a museum’s collection (AAM 2009b).

Along with this considerable list of responsibilities, curators are now also required to be educational conduits between museum collections and the public by developing and participating in educational workshops, symposia, lectures, and art classes. Moreover, since the mid-1990s, curators’ professional capacity has been broadened to include the role of cultural broker: a controversial role that is viewed by a variety of art professionals either as helping to destroy the restrictive hierarchies inherent in the canon of Western art, or as aiding in the production and support of reductive constructs that frame, package, and market the collective identities of marginalized groups to elite buyers’ tastes and inter- ests (Ramirez 1996: 23–24). Curators are considered to be the “gatekeepers” of museums as they choose which objects to exhibit, which artists to showcase, how art and artist are presented, and how the public will interact with the art displayed within the frame of a museum’s physical and ideological space (Alexander 1996: 10). Thus, curators wield a great deal of power in influencing both the production and presentation of culture embedded within art.

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This research therefore examines issues of cultural reproduction, power, and race through the lens of the art museum curator, and investigating how the professional capacity of these cultural gatekeepers may influence the level of minority attendance within public art museums. Based on in-depth, face-to-face interviews with public art museum curators, we investigate how race is viewed and constructed within the field of art. Our findings suggest that cultural repro- duction surrounding the art museum promotes a narrative of whiteness through the preferences, decisions, and social interactions of the curatorial staff, board of directors, and donors. Additionally, financial constraints within public art museums limit the abilities of curators to address issues of diversity in purchas- ing works and presenting exhibits by artists of color as well as interacting with the surrounding community. We conclude by discussing outstanding questions, this study’s limitations, and future directions for research on the link between cultural reproduction, race, and the arts.

Social Space, Privilege, and Culture

Historically, the ideology of public art museums has been divided into two distinct arenas: either to acquire, preserve, and display art, or to educate the pub- lic on the value of art and the process of art appreciation (Duncan 1995; Zolberg 1981). Curators play a pivotal role in either approach, as their choices simulta- neously create and reflect the dominant cultural narrative interpreted through the curators’ training, beliefs, and experiences (Robins 2005). A museum’s exhibi- tions and permanent displays communicate this particular narrative based upon the selective interpretation and presentation of art by its curatorial staff (Ruiten- berg 2011). The racial history of much of this dominant cultural narrative is decidedly Western and white and yet, portrayed as neutral and normative (Berger 2005; McIntosh 2001; Zolberg 1984). Thus, the choices of the curatorial staff illustrate their power to reproduce the dominant cultural narrative of whiteness and white privilege, which in turn becomes the social reality and is therefore construed by the public to be both normal and legitimate.

Bourdieu’s (1989) theory of social space and symbolic power offers a pre- liminary framework to examine the collective social experience within the pub- lic art museum. Bourdieu maintains that social position is defined by one’s location within social space, a space which is made up of economic, social, cultural, and symbolic resources. Differing access to these resources creates variation in social relationships with individuals and groups “defined by their relative positions within that space” (Bourdieu 1985: 723–724). Thus, through social interaction, social space can be a place of conflict or of collective unity (and be both, simultaneously). These social places house the internal and exter- nal symbolism that mark their inhabitants as insiders or outsiders (Dangschat 2009).

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Bonilla-Silva (1996) extends this examination of social space and sym- bolic power by connecting social space and symbolic power with race. Bonilla- Silva’s concept of “racialized social systems” maintains that these economic, political, social, and ideological realms of society are also influenced by the placement of individuals into racial categories. Within racialized social systems, the categorization of individuals involves a hierarchy whereby the dominantly placed race often has greater access to a variety of resources as well as the power to designate physical and social boundaries between itself and other racially marginalized groups (Bonilla-Silva 1996).

These resources include the cultural images and symbols which represent what Bourdieu (1989) labels as the “schemata of classification,” a symbolic language that creates and reflects the social reality. Those who control the sche- mata of classification control the social space and in turn, the social positions within it. Thus, social space can be used as a means of exclusion by the domi- nant ingroup—individuals and groups that control the economic, social, cul- tural, and symbolic resources—and through the use of symbolic power, “impose the vision of legitimate divisions” (Bourdieu 1989: 21) within the social space of the public art museum. These boundaries include a racial iden- tity, which may be expressed in terms of discrimination and bias against the ra- cialized outgroup (Bonilla-Silva 1996; Brewer 1999).

A cumulative body of research examining whiteness in politics (Avila and Rose 2009; Holyfield, Moltz, and Bradley 2009), education (Picower 2009; Preston 2007), and professional sports (Newman 2007; Staurowsky 2007) sup- ports the notion of the construction and utilization of racialized privilege in var- ious institutions. Cultural capital, defined as the “institutionalized, high-status cultural signals used for social and cultural exclusion,” presents an avenue for exploring whiteness and white privilege within public art institutions, as white- ness becomes part of the visual code used for social and cultural exclusion (La- mont and Lareau 1988: 156). Culture is powerful, for it contains the ideas, beliefs, and traditions of a group or society while simultaneously offering the means for collective communication, interaction, and cohesion (Swartz 1997). Art museums transmit culture linking individuals and solidifying group mem- bership by communicating these ideas, beliefs, and traditions via visual codes (Bourdieu and Darbel 1991; Swartz 1997). Hence, meaning accorded to visual art objects and the social interactions surrounding them can reflect the privi- leged social construct of whiteness and add legitimacy to the racialized social hierarchy within society.

White privilege and cultural reproduction in the arts are connected by the interaction between art object, museum, and patron. White privilege presents a series of rewards, including “the probability that imagery will support the white experience, the ability to purchase imagery that reflects whiteness, and the

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ability to remain unaware of other languages and customs of persons of color without feeling guilt or ignorance” (McIntosh 2001). Cultural capital as a pow- erful tool of social and cultural exclusion has the ability to frame the cultural experience of the art museum as a racial experience of white privilege. Hence, public art museums contain the power to control the categorization as well as legitimize the method of classification within the realm of ideas known as cul- ture (Alexander 1996).

Moreover, within the art museum, the power to present racially marginal- ized groups as “the other” is often expressed in terms of its visual relationship to the white dominant group (Desai 2000). Exhibits are frequently packaged as properties and exploited by the theme of “the other” to appeal to the broadest possible audience (Noriega 1999; Zolberg 1981). Artworks from countries such as China and Japan are often displayed using iconic definitions of Western art standards and interpretations (Desai 2000). These standards are set by art museum professionals—the curators, directors, and board members—who have the power to impose a certain cultural value and status within the field of art (Acord 2010). Whiteness thus becomes the unnamed norm as non-whites are presented as separate, and “othered” in contrast to the standard of whiteness.

“Othering” is defined as the reductive representation of an entire group into dichotomies of “us versus them,” or “primitive versus civilized,” to be used a marker of identity within a social hierarchy predicated upon power and status (Said 1979). Examples of “othering” in art are discussed in Berger’s (2005) critique of works of the mid-1800s American genre painter William Sid- ney Mount. Berger’s research reveals the embedded racial identities of Mount’s white and non-white subjects which enable audiences to invoke a decidedly European American view of “a series of binaries” (industrious and lazy, awake and asleep, white and black) giving whiteness tangible visible traits. This ra- cialized view within art and its subsequent reductive stereotypes is also exam- ined in the research of sociologist Stuart Hall (1997) through his discussion of the reification of the “cultural other.” Stating that black artists’ works have become “the multi in multicultural,” Hall (1997: 274) maintains that this reifica- tion mutes the individual voices of black artists within the culturally dominant structure of the art museum or gallery. This research expands upon the con- cepts of social space, symbolic power, race, and exclusion in order to examine how whiteness is embodied within the field of art through the social interac- tions and cultural resources associated with public art museums.

Methods

Employing an inductive grounded theory approach (Corbin and Strauss 1990), we gathered and analyzed data from the actual experiences of curators engaging in their profession within the field of the public art museum. Data

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were gathered by the first author through face-to-face interviews at nine museums open to the general public in a Midwestern state in summer 2011. Utilizing U.S. census data (2010), we chose ten museum sites in nine different rural, suburban, and urban areas in order to account for differences in population density, regional employment opportunities, interests, and cultural offerings. We further divided our sample by choosing five sites that 2010 U.S. census data indicated were weighted heavily toward a black population and five sites that were heavily weighted toward a white population. We use this method of site selection to account for possible differences in exhibition offer- ings and attendance demographics. Curators were recruited personally by mail after a review of museum Web sites. All but one museum responded, for a total of nine museums in nine different metropolitan locations: four museums in predominantly white regions and five in predominantly black regions. Eleven public art museum curators and five public art museum directors were interviewed. All directors interviewed were acting in a curatorial capacity due to budget cuts and the elimination of curatorial staff.1 The demographics of interview participants categorized by race, gender, and degree earned are described in Table 1.

Table 1 Demographics of Survey Participants

Participant type Number

Total number 16 Females 11 Males 5 Master’s degree

Total 6 Female 6 Male 0

Doctoral degree Total 10 Female 5 Male 5

Title of curator 11 Title of director 5 Race—white 16

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Interviews were semi-structured yet flexible to allow for the discussion of topics deemed relevant by the participants. Our questions focused on the duties and practices of actively employed museum curators as well as their conceptu- alizations of art, quality, culture, community, race and ethnicity, and their insti- tutions of employment. The interviews, which lasted between one and three and one-half hours in length, were conducted at the participants’ places of employment, digitally recorded (with two exceptions),2 and transcribed verba- tim. We manually coded all interview data and field notes and initially focused on keywords such as “white,” “culture,” “European,” “history,” “fundraising,” and “money.” Each sentence was coded—often with multiple codes—to make certain of complete theoretical understanding and treatment. These codes, including all variations, were later grouped into substantive categories which were then checked for exclusivity. As interviews progressed, subsequent inter- view questions were added to focus on specific categories until saturation (no new knowledge of an idea or concept) was reached. Our categories included cultural reproduction as the means by which societal values and beliefs are rep- licated within the art museum; museum bureaucracy and how this bureaucracy affects cultural reproduction; and the interaction between race and art, and how race is defined and presented through curatorial behavior and attitudes. Reflec- tive memos were written to aid in the understanding of the relationships between categories. Further analysis revealed theoretical links between catego- ries concerning curators and the connection between cultural reproduction, social space, and race in the field of art. Categories were ordered into a logical whole, pointing to an explanatory theory.

Findings

Whiteness: The Role of Curators and Patrons

Curators have the ability to project a particular social reality and to push social and intellectual boundaries by presenting these cultural images and sym- bols through various forms of media (Paul 2005) as well as to ask thought-pro- voking questions by exhibiting controversial works of art (Cuno et al. 1997). The curator’s crafting of an exhibit has the ability to project the politics, ideol- ogy, and values of the time (Staniszewski 1998). Throughout our study, cura- tors reflected on their choices and the collections under their care while discussing their role in reproducing and normalizing the dominant cultural nar- rative. To investigate the power curators have in crafting the cultural narrative our initial questions concerned cultural reproduction, we asked the following. What cultural messages do you feel the art itself imparts to the viewer? What responsibility and/or influence do you feel you have, if any, in crafting these messages? What constraints, if any, do you encounter?

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Nine curators readily acknowledged their role in defining culture, while seven seemed to underplay or discount their role in the process. Discussing the artworks under her care, Gwen, a curator of contemporary art, explains the shaping of historical context and the connection between art, social class, and status:

GWEN: So a museum is a place of understanding: seeing the real thing and not the reproduction, actually being in contact, in the flesh with the work and learning about history. So there is only one history this museum tends to say. It could be a little more articulate (here).

FA (First Author): What history is that?

GWEN: It’s the history of the rich people who bought these pieces and now we (curators at the museum) understand that it’s not any more just about that but…I think that everyone in any point in time (here) thought that they were doing their best…doing the best for everyone.

A historical perspective can point to the manner in which much of muse- ums’ permanent collections denote an underlying narrative linking issues of race, status, and social class (Thompson 2008). Walter, a curator of European painting and sculpture, expressed similar views, connecting the permanent col- lection under his care with race and a history of whiteness:

I might like to think these things (issues of culture and history) are sort of broadly under- stood; not at all. So there’s a kind of remoteness. Yeah, I mean it’s also…you know it IS European so in a sense it’s not (understood) and it’s OLD so it’s not (understood)… it’s nei- ther contemporary…which in itself has a whole set of problematic…and it’s you know, about a very particular set of cultures which are, you know…white.

Whiteness also extended to the artists as well as the art collectors. Throughout our interviews, whiteness of art and artists was presented as the unquestioned norm, with white art and artists deemed generic without race or ethnicity. Nine curators readily acknowledged the whiteness of art. However, three curators proclaimed that the field of art, and specifically the curatorial profession, had moved beyond this limiting vision of race and ethnicity. Geof- frey, a museum director with over 30 years of curating experience, recognized the whiteness of art as well as issues of gender embedded within the field of art:

There’s been an unspoken norm—it’s not even unspoken. I mean Guerilla Girls (an anony- mous group of feminists who fought sexism within the visual arts) made their point not all that long ago…like only 8% of the artists at MOMA on the walls were women. And that’s changed, but it’s not 50%, so yeah, that was very vocally attacked and…laid bare for what it was…the art was mostly white males.

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Curators frequently referenced only white male artists in their comments, and notably, no curator referenced any artist of color in describing significant art or beloved American artists. For example, Lucy, a curator of prints and drawings, referenced Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper in her discussion of prominent American artists, while renowned African American artists such as Robert S. Duncanson, Jacob Lawrence, Edmonia Lewis, and Romare Bearden were noticeably absent. Whiteness was also part of the underlying standard of cultural excellence in Edward’s discussion of prominent artists in American art and American history:

We chose to emphasize an historical perspective; Velasquez to Warhol. Warhol is considered to be the master of post-modernism. Rauschenberg, Johns (all white male artists)…all these artists give us a unique perspective of history. This is all part of American art and American history.

Museum patrons also influence the selection of predominantly white artists and white art. Curators discussed visitors’ lack of art knowledge and how this unawareness constrains the choices of exhibits, limiting the cultural narrative. Curatorial selections of exhibits are often made based on the amount of recog- nition an artist or art movement seems to have with the public. Lena, a museum director with over 20 years of curating experience, lamented the lim- ited repertoire of proven exhibits and the dubiousness of success in curating lesser known or even unfamiliar works of art:

It’s hard to figure what people like in exhibitions. You know people like Impressionism and Egypt. Past that you never know. Part of the problem is the average person—the only people they’ve heard of are Picasso and Renoir…and they love Egypt. So maybe Michelangelo will fill a room. So if you go away from those ten names, let’s say. You just don’t know.

Patrons’ lack of knowledge and limited familiarity of artists (Newsom and Silver 1978) encourage a cycle of whiteness in the presentation and exhibition of art (Berger 2005). Thus, the dominant cultural narrative is recycled, further supporting the value and meanings connected to whiteness. These values and meanings permeate throughout our culture creating an overarching narrative which is fostered and projected by the museum curator, viewed as the arbiter of the standards by which art and artists are judged (Bourdieu 1993; Brody 2003). This narrative often contains an element of ingroup and outgroup status for art and artist (Brody 2003). Curators shape these distinct groups through the presentation and interpretation of art within exhibitions (Robins 2005). These distinct groups can include a racial component in which the dominant cultural narrative of whiteness is put forward and seen as neutral and normative (Banks 2010; McIntosh 2001).

Art viewers seek out familiar elements when examining art in order to pro- vide individual meaning, which in turn invokes “memories, associations, and

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emotions” (Smith 2006). The experience of white privilege allows for whites to interact with images that represent their race and life experience on a frequent basis (McIntosh 2001). The unacknowledged norm of whiteness becomes a standard by which all other forms of art are judged (Rosenthal 2004). Several curators reflected on interactions with visitors that made this outgroup status clear. Jessica, a director acting as curator of a small municipal museum, described one encounter illustrating the standard of whiteness and the exclu- sionary experience that can take place within a public art museum:

I brought…they were a group of primarily African American students into the gallery and I essentially said… “How do you feel? These are all white people.” And they were pretty… some were more honest than others. And they said, “Well, you know black people were slaves. They didn’t have money. They couldn’t pay for a painting.” They also recognized that or…what else did they say… some of them…one did say, “Well, you”—you know, meaning the museum—“didn’t think black people were important, so you don’t have any paintings of black people.” So yes, it was like, “It’s like this all over.” It was kind of like an acknowl- edged dismissal and probably chalked up as kind of a shortcoming on our part.

White privilege can also appear in art museums through the order of pre- sentation. Geoffrey discusses the arrangement of art by culture and the subtle symbolism behind this presentation:

In a museum like this, right now today, because we have Oceanic art and African art and Asian art—it would be very difficult to say with OUR collection right now that the majority were white males because we’re so multicultural on the walls. In the European and American galleries though…what’s interesting is that they’re the two galleries that are upstairs and they take the entire first floor (laughing). You literally go down to the basement sort of, physically to see the other cultures, which is a little weird. It’s not foregrounded like the American and European art. Like you walk in…And there it is.

Gwen also addresses the power of exclusion in choosing works of art. When directly asked about issues of race and exclusion, she points to several issues of inequality inherent within the collection under her care. She goes on to discuss matters of choice, recognition, and constraints in acknowledging artists, presenting art, and purchasing artworks:

I want to show you these two pieces over here. We only have two pieces hanging here that are by African Americans. You could never tell they were done by African Americans. This (African American) artist and this (white) artist are contemporaries. They were good friends and often worked together, but THIS artist (white) is the one that is renowned. Why is that? I don’t know. This (African American artwork) is an important piece. It paved the way for all these artists (gestures to a section of all white artists) over here in this part of the gallery space. He was a huge influence, a pivotal force. Is it his best work? I don’t know, but I had to work for hours to convince the director to let us have it and it was a donation! Very few people have heard of him; the public. No one knows. I told the accessions committee that we needed to be more diverse, that only about 3.5% of the art was done by non-white males. They asked me why that mattered.

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The phrase, “you could never tell they were done by African Americans,” was echoed by another curator, demonstrating the “centrality of whiteness” (Tierney 2006) in norming the art experience. Art, as a representation of cul- ture, is therefore a “positional truth” connected to issues of history, power, and authority (Abu-Lughod 1991). This positional truth has shifted throughout history, excluding the participation of not only people of color, but women (Guerilla Girls 1998), gays (Katz 2008), and youth (Mason and McCarthy 2006) as well. Jessica’s African American students demonstrated an acknowl- edgement as well as an acceptance of this exclusionary experience and also the feelings of powerlessness to change it. Both Jessica and Gwen admitted to issues of inequality and also the need for art museums to address these issues. Jessica spoke of broadening the collection to better reflect the diversity of our society. Gwen talked of the necessity to press for recognition and inclusion of artists of color.

All curators spoke of the need for some kind of change, including broad- ening their reach, expanding their collections, and calling for more diversity within their profession. Institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Afri- can Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) (2011) also recognize and promote the need for curatorial diversity and a moving away from the Western standard of art in order to make the experiences and identities of minorities and minority artists more visible. Gant’s (2011) preliminary research of art museums within New York State—one of the most racially and ethnically diverse states in the coun- try (American Community Survey 2010)—indicates that the racial minority presence of museum staff is highly underrepresented. Additionally, African Diaspora curators, as well as those on the continent itself, continue to wrestle with the Western colonial way of viewing other cultures demonstrating the breadth and width of whiteness within the field of art (Chikukwa 2011). Gwen referenced a past experience at another institution outside the region in which she curated:

I’ve come to understand that the reason why art galleries do not see a lot of African Ameri- cans is that there isn’t a lot of African American curators. I don’t know why that is… but I mean it is clearly an aspect of American society and it’s an impermeability that is still there… but I had an African American colleague when I was at (another institution) and you know… she made the difference between night and day. One day all of a sudden our audi- ence changed and that’s because she was there. Absolutely. Of course, you as a curator have to make an effort to be welcoming and to be… to work on this and everyone around you has to do it. But, little by little it happened. It was unbelievable.

These struggles with issues of authentic representation illustrate the persist- ing marginalization of other cultures and identities within the field of art as a whole, as well as the inherent power of cultural production.

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Bureaucracy, Money, and Whiteness

Curators often spoke of the constraints that prohibited them from affecting these changes. Many of these constraints center on the power dynamics and money associated with the internal workings of the art museum. The debate over money, power, and art is well documented and centers on whose voice carries more weight: the curator, the “stakeholders,” or the public (Cuno et al. 1997). Structural elements within the field of art and within the art museum itself also influence the cultural narrative. This portion of the interviews revolved around this initial question: In what ways do the board and your sponsors (financial backers of a specific exhibit) enhance or inhibit your choices/actions?

Curators raised several issues involving museum bureaucracy. A key factor of the museum bureaucracy is the power and prominence of the board and its affiliates, which helped shape the selective interpretation and presentation of art. The influence of whiteness is reflected in the museum’s board members, donors, and patrons. The museum’s continual need for funding enables the board to influence the museum’s choices of art and art exhibits, and thus repro- duce the dominant cultural narrative of whiteness.

According to all curators interviewed, all of the museums that are exam- ined in this study are similarly administered. Public art museums are organized and managed by a board of trustees whose primary role is fiduciary. Board membership is voluntary and members are nominated and elected by existing members of the board. The director is employed by the board and oversees the collections, research, exhibits, and “public face” of the museum. The director hires curators to manage each particular department, such as contemporary art or renaissance painting and sculpture. Curators consult the director in regard to new acquisitions and the selection of possible exhibits. All fiduciary issues of acquisition and selection are brought before the board after being vetted by the director. New art purchases and the leasing of outside themed exhibits must be approved by the director and then the board. The board has final say in all mat- ters of purchasing and leasing.

Historically, money has influenced the arts through patronage and/or pur- chase (Banks 2010; Thompson 2008; Zolberg 1984). Board members are among the key “stakeholders” in a museum. Their main focus is the manage- ment of money, which involves acquiring donors, attracting audiences, and maintaining legitimacy (Alexander 1996). Members of the board tend to be white and have a certain level of education, wealth, power, and prestige; as such, the social space they inhabited represents whiteness and an elevated amount of economic and cultural capital.

When asked about the diversity of the museum boards, curators responded with a variety of answers that revealed the normative view of whiteness by

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associating diversity with gender, age, or occupation—race was absent in all but one of curators’ responses. For example, Jessica responded by first discussing gender:

FA: So how diverse is the board?

JESSICA: The board is, I would say…fairly representative of the community; probably hovering in the 60–70% sort of range. There’s some work to do.

FA: What do you mean by 60% to 70%?

JESSICA: Gender and age. OK (slightly defensively)…the missing 35–40% is that we don’t have as much racial diversity as we should. We also probably need some socioeconomic diversity but that’s very difficult for nonprofits…for whom…nonprofits that rely on their board as essentially fundraising instigators.

Jason responded to the question of diversity through occupational prestige, while Harriet, director and curator of a small rural museum, replied by discuss- ing age:

JASON: It’s the way that boards work and they select people from various aspects of the community, I mean it includes SOME diversity…I mean there’s a MINISTER…I mean they try to be inclusive but most of them have a financial responsibility.

HARRIET: It’s not as much (of a closed circle) as it used to be. We’ve been trying to break out of that as much as we can…and go to younger people.

The necessity of external funding and maintaining social networks that can tap new financial connections dominated much of the curator’s comments. The non-profit status enables public art museums to receive grants. However, it was agreed by all curators interviewed that grants are no longer enough to support a museum. It was apparent throughout the course of all interviews that the search for financial support and the overall lack of financial resources influence board choices and membership. Issues of racial and ethnic diversity are over- shadowed by the need to acquire a steady stream of funding. Lena described board members as, “friends of people who are already on the board…they’re generally from big corporations in town, banks, philanthropists, people who have art collections.” Cameron gave a similar description, saying that board members tend to be “economically well-placed…they’re successful business men and women from the community or sometimes they come from old money. Many of them are art collectors in their own right.”

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Many curators are uncomfortable talking about diversity. Geoffrey further explains the tension between a museum’s desire for a diverse board that reflects the community population and the need for financial resources:

We have a diverse board and we have African Americans on the board. We don’t consciously say, “Oh, do we have someone from the Asian community, someone form the Indian commu- nity?” I mean it would be great if you know we had various…every type of ethnicity and reli- gion or whatever—we don’t—but we definitely try and get people from…certainly geographically from around the region; different areas, different backgrounds, different jobs. We hope the way things are that the board members bring their connections with them. I mean that is DEFINITELY part of it. Can they help fundraise and…We’re always looking for people that can inspire giving and can help with the fundraising; so that’s a big plus if they bring that.

The continual quest for financial resources aids in the reproduction of whiteness among board members. Attached to whiteness is a shared cultural narrative of history and identity (Frankenberg 1993), creating a high degree of social and cultural isolation (Bonilla-Silva, Goar, and Embrick 2006). The board’s whiteness becomes “racialized” through the norming of matters such as personal preference, emotion, and esthetics (Bonilla-Silva 2003). Throughout our interviews, it became clear that the racialization found within the board- room creates definite esthetic as well as social constraints.

Many of the constraints placed upon art museums and art curators are fiduciary in origin. The recession of 2008 created a financial setback—often significant—for all art museums in our study. All curators indicated that decreased financial support from corporate sponsors, private donors, and gov- ernment-funded grants has forced many museums to cut back their programs. In turn, shortage of funds has eliminated staff, stifled community outreach, and curtailed curators’ choices of exhibits. This lack of financial support has helped to create a whiteness of place by compelling the museum and its staff to adhere to more conservative policies that align with a proven base of support. The museum community is predominantly older, whiter, and better educated (NEA 2009a). Policies aimed at maintaining these established audiences are therefore chosen by default to support the visual symbols of racial exclusion predomi- nantly white-approved art and white artists—which distinguish the dominant group. Although many curators stated that they continue to offer a variety of exhibits and programs, they also confessed that financial setbacks have severely curtailed these offerings, thereby reducing their impact. Geoffrey discusses the impact of reduced funding on the nature of exhibits and the pressure curators’ face to produce exhibits of quality as well as exhibits that are profitable:

GEOFFREY: Can you keep doing shows on Rockwell ad nausea? When you have a bad turn out for a particular show, it so impacts the board. The board looks at your numbers and asks, “Well,

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what happened here?” Well, you know nobody knew who the artist was. “Well, who do people know?” Well, they know Rockwell and they know Monet and they know Warhol (all white males)…it’s like the same five shows over and over.

FA: So it does become almost circular in the sense that it’s the same artists…

GEOFFREY: Absolutely, over and over again.

Policies aimed at attracting this established audience are also reflected in the expanded duties of curators, who are now required to actively pursue donors. Curators acknowledged that these donors are largely linked to board members by personal affiliation. The curators’ pursuit of donors reproduces the whiteness of structure by mirroring the whiteness, wealth, and power of its board. Cameron illustrates this link between whiteness, money, and art in describing his expanded duties as curator:

Curators today are expected to be many more things. We’re involved in development…we’re expected to convey a group of donors through the galleries if it benefits the institution.

Museum donors are treated with deference in order to insure their financial support and to establish a long-term relationship that continues from one gener- ation to the next (Alexander 1996). Donors wield a certain amount of leverage in the choice of art and art exhibits. Art and status are linked by money and the prestige that art symbolizes (Thompson 2008). Culture is therefore repro- duced through the taste and values of the donors connected to the museum as well as its board (Alexander 1996). Since financial support supersedes all other needs, the choices and voices of the art museum curator are constrained and compelled to reflect the taste and values of those connected to power and money. Consequently, the exclusionary cycle of whiteness is reproduced, a never-ending circle of donor, board, director, curator, and art object based upon the underlying whiteness privilege and power. Power and culture merge as the defining characteristics of culture are dictated by the dominant group.

The Interaction between Race, Place, and Art

Art museums project a predominantly white image (Berger 2005; McIn- tosh 2001) creating a place of whiteness, which in turn fosters a social barrier of racial exclusion (Fredericks 2011; Gilmore 2002; Shaw and Sullivan 2011). The lead question in this portion of the interview was: In what way do you feel any group, such as a specific racial or ethnic group, might feel either included or excluded in the museum experience and/or the art on display within it? Twelve curators spontaneously noted the perception of whiteness of place when discussing museum patronage and recognized that reaching beyond the

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demographic of whiteness requires an acknowledgement that art and art-making is a varied practice. Lucy talked about the whiteness of place and linked the art and the social experience in her explanation:

I think, unfortunately, there’s a perception that there isn’t anything there for me, kind of thing among some people (in reference to African Americans). That the artists who show here have nothing to do with me and my life, which I think if they came, they would see that wasn’t true. I think it’s also museums tend to be very social experiences. I mean some people come alone, but most people come in pairs or small groups and it can just be a factor of, “It’s not something my close-knit group of people does together.”

Alice and her colleague Lydia described their efforts in attempting to fos- ter a place of racial and cultural inclusion for an African American audience:

LYDIA: We met with an African American women’s group about exhibitions.

ALICE: We were trying to talk to them about an exhibition that we were planning. We were going to have African American artists in it, but they weren’t even particularly interested in that. They only wanted to know about exhibitions that were ABOUT African Americans or African American art, because this exhibition wasn’t specifically about African American art; it just happened to have a number of African American artists in it.

LYDIA: They had very specific ideas about the types of art they were familiar with and the types of art they wanted to see. But they made it very clear that those weren’t going to be like gateway exhibitions or exhibitions that would get them in the door initially so they would come back and consider other exhibitions. So we were really dismayed at first, I think, because of that. Because in OUR mind…OK so if we had a show, like a quilt shown of African American quilts that would get them in the door then hopefully, that would be a way that you would get people in here initially…would get them comfortable.

ALICE: We were trying to talk to them about cultural identity and the complexity of cultural identity and they weren’t interested. And we thought surely—maybe this was, well obviously, that was pretty na€ıve on our part.

Alice and Lydia highlight the complexity of cultural reproduction and the intricacies of creating an authentic experience within the space of an art museum. Urban researchers maintain that culture is a powerful means of exclu- sion through the production and domination of geographical space (Shaw and Sullivan 2011; Zukin 1995). Many curators attempt to alter this perception of white space within the art museum through targeted exhibits, hoping to connect

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with other communities. However, there is often a racial and/or cultural disconnect between the curatorial staff and the public it is trying to reach (Cuno et al. 1997). Wendy described curating two exhibits that effectively reached the African American community in her town. Her description also showcases the astute observation of one of the African American artists:

Well, we try to reach out to the African American community. We have had two shows (two African American artists). Both of these shows were very popular with the African American community. After the one artist had his opening, he told me it was the first time he had a sea of black faces at an opening. He said most of his openings are white.

However, the attempt by Geoffrey’s museum to reach the African Ameri- can community had limited success:

I went to the radio stations in black communities, black radio stations. And one of the things that just sort of blew me away personally—for example, I was talking with a radio show host, and his station is about I would say less than a minute drive from here…and he asked me where the museum was. I mean, because he really didn’t know. He said, “Wow, do I have to be a member to get in the door?” and I said, “Oh, no.” And so he asked a number of ques- tions that he felt his listeners wanted to know: where it was, if you had to be a member, basic things. He wanted his audience to be sure and get this information because he assumed they wouldn’t know. I thought, “Wow, we are really disconnected.” This museum has been here 90 years and you’ve NEVER had to be a member to come in the door and ah…it’s always been free up until this past year. There are no restrictions on entrance of any kind. We dis- covered that with the African American community, I mean, historically we have not been really as connected as we could be or even as we thought we were. I think what the entire museum organization: the board, the steering committee, everybody, experienced was that there’s a lot of work to be done.

The issue of targeted exhibits was debated by several curators. All curators admitted it was part of a museum’s lexicon to present exhibits directed at spe- cific audiences. However, the framing of this activity was divided into two dis- parate positions. The majority of curators (13) viewed targeted exhibits as a method of establishing a voice of diversity within the museum, while a small faction (3) questioned these types of exhibits’ authenticity. Lena described the thought process behind targeted cultural exhibits and her museum’s limited suc- cess in attracting the African American community:

FA: Do you ever do exhibits targeting a specific audience?

LENA: Yeah, sure, we do. We try to have a variety over the years so you look at the big picture and you try to see what areas, you know, we’ll have an Asian show, then we’ll have an African show, then we’ll have a contemporary show. We’ve struggled with our neighbors who are by and large African American. But we try to have different shows that appeal to them. We have an African

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American festival and that brings a lot of people from their neighborhood, but it’s just one day.

However, the targeting of cultural groups through a single exhibit was viewed negatively by three of the curators interviewed, expressing the view that the effort was not genuine and was possibly perceived solely as a moneymak- ing venture. Edward commented on the practice of targeting groups through a single exhibit by responding:

I don’t like superficiality. The targeting of an audience must be authentic. The activities must be ongoing and not just a token gesture toward any group. That’s an insult. For many people, art museums are viewed as elitist institutions that are continually raising money. I often hear, “I didn’t know the museum was for me, I didn’t know the museum was for my people.”

Further, several museums had organizations such as clubs, guilds, or pro- grams that had a racial and/or ethnic focus. However, curators described these groups as self-contained entities that did not appear to influence the overall general museum attendance. As Helen explains:

We have our (African American) society…and also our (African American) committee who really tries to get us out there. But, of course, they do tend to be more supportive and more interested in…when we have African American exhibitions.

Comments such as “I didn’t know the museum was a place for me, I didn’t know the museum was for my people” illustrate the racial divide that occurs in many museums. Whiteness occurs through the process of exclusion whereby art and art patronage is seen by many outsiders as a predominantly white social experience (Shaw and Sullivan 2011). Edward’s comments suggest that museum exhibitions, although viewed by curators as embracing cultural diversity, may in fact contribute to feelings of racial exclusion by appearing to be inauthentic, further enhancing feelings of otherness within minority groups. Moreover, as Alice observed, racial and cultural exclusion may exist within the expression of the art itself through a lack of context and meaning between art object and viewer.

The link between race and social class was also a key issue for curators. Previous research finds that social class is a proven barrier to museum partici- pation (Jackson and Scott 1999; Jun, Kyle, and O’Leary 2011). Further, the conflation of race and lower socioeconomic status is prevalent throughout the United States, as African Americans are often viewed as being of lower socio- economic status by the white majority (Gilens 1996; Low 2009). Race and social class were often linked by curators when discussing outsiders’ percep- tions of the museum as well as in overall museum attendance. Walter acknowl- edged the difference between the museum’s patron community and the geographical surrounding community:

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FA: So do you think the community that visits the museum is the same or different from the surrounding (physical) community?

WALTER: Oh, totally different. They’re older, whiter, better educated. I mean this has been proven over and over again through studies. I mean it’s improved but if you mean the truly surrounding community…it’s mostly African American.

Lucy was more direct in her assessment of some of the constraints of museum patronage, including lack of leisure time and low income. Her linking of race with social class was pointed as she raised the stereotype of a single parent—a status often associated with African American women—as part of an overall demographic:

I mean how many families, let’s say are a single parent and that single parent is working? So when are they actually going to come, the weekend? You know, maybe they’re just too busy doing…they don’t have leisure perhaps. You know I’m not saying that African Americans are the only poor people in the city. I’m sure that’s not true; but I’m SURE many ARE.

Exclusion was also discussed in terms of an entrance fee. While some muse- ums had no entry fee or charged only for special exhibits, a growing number had added a fee to cover maintenance costs and other expenses. Other museums increased their special event prices. Curators were clearly unhappy with these changes because they believed that it prohibited lower-income people from visit- ing and enjoying the collections. Many curators worried that it added to the per- ception that museums were elitist institutions. Geoffrey became quite animated in his response to added fees and the issues of social class and art, expressing a desire for experimentation in the hopes of appealing to a wider audience:

The idea that art…that somehow we’ve dealt with the issue of class and art…we have NOT. And people in the museum world we KNOW this, we KNOW it and when I was talking earlier about experimenting with things—with poetry slams…we did one here about a month ago—we had a completely different audience. It was young and we had kids from high school that had memorized poems by heart. We had some—I wouldn’t say break dancing, I wouldn’t know what I would call it, because I’m just so out of it—but we had dancers that were grade school through high school…again we just had this completely different audience here.

Geoffrey further explained that the different audience was much more racially diverse than usual, including a notable African American presence. Offering a more diverse program by acknowledging other forms of art had allowed for alternative avenues of expression, which in turn created opportuni- ties to connect with a larger audience. His viewpoint underscores what he and other curators had acknowledged: that art museums are perceived by many to be elitist, too narrowly focused, and racially homogenous. To remain relevant, many curators stated that art museums must continually work to cast off the label of elitism and find new ways to connect to the surrounding community.

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As Geoffrey demonstrated, creating new connections broadened the museum community to include groups outside the museum’s demographic norms.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this article, we address how whiteness and white privilege has the power to influence the racial disparity of public art museum attendance through the role of the museum curator. At a time when minority participation in the arts is declining, examining the relationship between cultural reproduction and race within the public art museum is valuable, as research has found numerous benefits associated with such participation. Central to our investigation is the question of how can the role of curator influence public participation in refer- ence to both white and minority populations?

We argue that Bourdieu’s (1989) conceptualization of social space and symbolic power provides a framework for the examination of various social interactions within the public art museum. Additionally, Lamont and Lareau’s (1988) definition of cultural capital—institutionalized high-status cultural sig- nals used for social and cultural exclusion—provides a conceptual method of viewing whiteness as a racial identity in which members actively participate in its construction and maintenance. Bonilla-Silva’s (1996) concept of “racialized social systems” further extends this framework by connecting an underlying racial hierarchy of economic, political, and social privileges with Bourdieu’s concepts of social space and symbolic power. This racialized social system embedded within the social structure is thus utilized by the dominant racial group to maintain a specific racial order. Together, these theoretical concepts aid in illustrating the means by which whiteness and white privilege permeate the social space of the public art museum.

We find that within the art museum, whiteness has generally been employed as the comparative baseline category from which much of art and its artists are measured. Our findings suggest that curators’ selection and presenta- tion of artworks maintain whiteness by exhibiting predominantly white artists recognized and well liked by the public in order to sustain membership and preserve financial contributions and participation by the general public. As much of money and power is predominantly white, much of art and art exhibits have moved toward the normative expression of whiteness reflecting these donors (Noriega 1999). This white base shapes the attitudes of curators and directors. As a result, art and artists of color are often marginalized or omitted.

Moreover, exhibits and other offerings have either inadvertently excluded minorities or overtly “othered” them by promoting minority art and artists as a separate cultural experience (Berger 2005; Chikukwa 2011; Guerilla Girls 1998; Hall 1997; Katz 2008; Mason and McCarthy 2006). This separate cul- tural experience indicates a form of cultural racism (Helms 1997) whereby the

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cultural differences are enough to sequester the art and artists in order to clearly define how they rank against the established norm (Bonilla-Silva et al. 2003). While some museums within our research offer clubs or programs to specific minority groups, it was noted that participation of these members rarely goes beyond the designated organization. Although the majority of curators pro- fessed a desire for the museum to project an image of diversity and inclusion, none in our study seem to have been successful in doing so. Accordingly, many of these curators noted that many African Americans seem to perceive the art museum as a designated white space.

It is evident that whiteness is not only a racial category but an identity that is fostered and maintained through social interaction. Thus, white individuals’ racial identity is validated by social interactions centered on exclusion pre- sented as neutral and normal through the seemingly unbiased medium of art (Desai 2000). The whiteness of culture and cultural capital within art museums is reproduced primarily through seemingly unintentional acts of exclusion and othering of minority groups by the curators and directors, as well as the use of predominantly white social networks of the museums’ board of trustees. It should be noted that the behaviors, preferences, and social interactions that we documented should be confined to the public art museum experience and should not be assumed to be universal to all institutions. Nor do we imply that the preferences, decisions, and social interactions of the curators, directors, and board of trustees that sustain whiteness are overt in nature.

However, it should also be noted that an undercurrent of “It Wasn’t Me!” (Bonilla-Silva et al. 2003) prevailed throughout much of the interview process. Although the majority of curators described their profession as the pivotal force in research, acquisition, and exhibition, the majority of curators were also quick to point to the many bureaucratic limitations that prevented them from address- ing the racial inequality that was brought to light during the interview process: a seemingly contradictory stance. These findings add to the body of research that show how the hegemony of whiteness is actively constructed. Although the struggle for control over the cultural symbols embodied within art (particularly contemporary art) is constant, the dominant discourse within this field continues to be under the control of commercial capitalism and the marketplace (Gramsci 1975; Grossberg 1986: 68–70). This control is indicated by the noticeable influ- ence of board members and their connection to economic resources. As our data indicate, these board members—as well as their social networks—are primarily white, educated, and wealthy and therefore have the power to impose a certain social and cultural reality within the museum they oversee. This social and cul- tural reality is grounded in a racial hegemony predicated on whiteness.

Our findings are important because they demonstrate the degree to which ostensibly impartial institutions such as public art museums play a part in the

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maintenance of a racial hierarchy predicated upon whiteness. Within the public art museum, whiteness provides a distinct social reality by simultaneously reproducing and confirming the dominant cultural narrative within a distinct social space. Previous research investigating racialized privilege and whiteness has showcased the connection between whiteness, place, and privilege (Housel 2009; Neely and Samura 2011; Shaw and Sullivan 2011); however, our research focusing on curators of art museums provides a unique means of examining whiteness and racialized privilege by exploring the social interaction of gatekeepers within the context of seemingly unbiased art objects and the physical space that surrounds them.

This study is limited in three key ways. First, it is possible that different regions apart from the Midwest would produce different results. Second, inter- views inherently present the possibility of socially desirable responses rather than truthful answers to difficult questions on race and social class. Last, this study does not directly examine African Americans’ beliefs and practices in regard to art and art museums, but relies on the preferences, decisions, social interactions, and observations of curators to garner information as to the inter- action between art museums and the surrounding communities.

Future research is needed to disentangle the nuanced relationships between art museums and the diverse communities they claim to represent. Interviews with art museum patrons, African American professionals, African American artists, and curators would garner more information as to the relationship between African Americans, cultural reproduction, and the art museum experi- ence. Investigation into racialized meanings of culture, the methods involved in cultural reproduction, and the examination of the exclusionary role of cultural capital will enable researchers to perceive how power and status is gained within a social hierarchy of race. Finally, connecting cultural reproduction inherent within art museums to white studies within critical race theory will allow us to better understand the racialized cultural narrative within which we live. This research will enable us to better see the depth and breadth of white privilege and the subtle power of racial exclusion. By understanding that art has both an esthetic and a social function, we have the opportunity to use the civic space of the public art museum as a resource to promote positive dialogue centering on racial and ethnic equality, mutual understanding, and respect.

ENDNOTES

*Please direct correspondence to Andria Blackwood, Department of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242, USA; e-mail: [email protected].

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1Hereafter, we will refer to these directors in a curatorial capacity for the sake of simplicity, to secure anonymity, and to avoid confusion.

2One participant requested that the interview not be recorded. A second interview could not be recorded due to poor sound quality.

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