A group of US-based museum professionals, artists, and cultural workers have banded together to launch a new group that they hope will remedy decades-old fractures within art institutions.
The group, known as Readying the Museum (RTM), was first kicked off in 2021, but it was not until Friday that the first stage of its program was made public. RTM will now put a focus on how managers and executive staff, and the ways these power figures maintain inequities in their ranks.
RTM emerged from a response to a global protest movement against racial injustice in 2020, spurred by the police killings of George Floyd and others. Around that time, Miki Garcia, director of Arizona State University Art Museum, and New York–based artist Xaviera Simmons received pleas from their peers, asking for advice.
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Simmons and Garcia found that DEI workshops were limited in their effectiveness. “The workshops were not enough,” Simmons said. “We needed a way to address the deeply entrenched issues that inhibit real change.”
“We saw museums leaning into reactionary methods: colleagues doing token hires, museums using artists as cover, and others being ousted from museum associations,” Garcia said. DEI hires were not sustainable solutions, she continued. “There was no desire to look at root causes and issues. There was a vast delta between what the workers were saying and…
