Precarity and Equity in the Art Museum
Juan Omar Rodriguez, photographed by Fiona Dang.
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
I remember seeing this quote from Indian novelist Arundhati Roy floating around social media earlier this summer as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to disrupt business-as-usual in the United States. While I felt unsettled by the way the circulation of this quote seemed to abstract the immense and unnecessary loss of life brought on by the ineffective pandemic responses from governments across the globe, I also felt more hopeful about the world that might succeed this tragedy. Revisiting this quote and the generative potentials of the rupture described by Roy, I want to reflect on the insights I have gained during this pandemic about the art museum professional pipeline.
I am fortunate that I have not experienced any major losses as a result of COVID-19, however the pause and isolation I have experienced since mid-March has forced me to confront with even greater urgency my precarious position in the art world. I have been working at art museums for at least six years, of which only the most recent three have been paid. Paid entry-level positions (in the form of internships) are quite rare in the art museum field, and even these remain inaccessible and unsustainable. Since beginning my tenure as a Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative (DAMLI) Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston in December of 2019, I had to continue the food service job I picked up after finishing my M.A. earlier that spring. I had intended this to be a temporary gig, but the lack of benefits and the monthly dispersal of my fellowship stipend meant that I needed the extra income of my service job to survive. This maneuver isn’t unique to me—earlier this summer, former DAMLI Fellow at the Perez Art Museum Naiomy Guerrero published a piece in ARTnews where she discussed a similar experience of working a second job to supplement her fellowship experience. Reading her reflections made me feel more validated in my frustrations and anxieties about the classist and racist machinations of the art world, which have been exacerbated by the economic strains and uncertainties brought by the pandemic. I am delighted that the DAMLI Fellow before me was able to land a job at the ICA as a curatorial assistant after two years of the fellowship. Unfortunately for me, the hiring freeze instituted at the ICA for the remainder of this fiscal year and the financial strains placed on the ICA and other art museums around the U.S. by the pandemic means that I might be stuck in professional limbo indefinitely when my fellowship ends next month.
I now find myself navigating the economic uncertainty of a pandemic as a perpetually emerging professional. While I’m anxious about the increasingly slim pool of open curatorial positions, especially for emerging or mid-level professionals, I am even more frightened about re-entering the hiring pool of a racist and classist field. The lack of equity in art museums, which if not exacerbated by the hiring freezes and furloughs throughout the pandemic has at least been thrown into sharper relief, make the art world a hostile place for people like me. I already struggle daily with imposter syndrome as a second-generation immigrant and first-generation student (not only in terms of post-secondary education, but also middle and high school) trying to build a career in the art world. The burden of representation I feel as a queer, brown, Latinx curator has been terribly exhausting to navigate even while employed; I am hesitant to imagine how my upbringing and perceived identities will come up during the application, interview, and onboarding processes. Of course, it’s possible that I might have a greater likelihood of avoiding some of these issues if I narrow my job search to culturally responsive institutions. It is very likely, unfortunately, that many of these smaller institutions have been disproportionately, if not similarly to their mainstream peers, affected by the economic instability wrought by the pandemic and the U.S. government’s ineffective response to it.
I am generally anxious about the present and future state of equity in the art world, and about my own survival as a curator specifically. At the same time, I am also excited and inspired by the work my peers and colleagues have been undertaking to imagine more expansive worlds, even before this crisis. In this time of widespread reckoning and dreaming, my hope is that the leaders of mainstream institutions will take heed from their locally oriented peers to plan and experiment with more sustainable, responsive, and equitable models of cultural stewardship, resource administration, labor and training, and institutional leadership to truly serve their communities.
