The lack of black and indigenous peoples and people of color in curatorial and executive positions in major arts institutions have been well known for nearly a decade. An oft-cited survey released by the Mellon Foundation in 2018, following a similar survey in 2015, found that 16% of curatorial roles were filled by people of color. Some museums took the survey to heart and started implementing changes, starting with appointing a director of diversity, equity and inclusion. Others, however, have been slower to embrace and have increasingly found themselves faced with a problem created by those in positions of power: due to a lack of meaningful investment in mentoring professionals in the arts. of color, the pool of applicants with previous experience in an arts institution, which was initially small, had become even smaller.
“Then came the summer of 2020,” said Tory Clarke, “and some of these organizations have blamed themselves for not going faster, because it now looks like a knee-jerk reaction. “
Clarke is a partner and co-founder of Bridge Partners, a minority-owned executive search firm that, over the past 18 years, has quietly established itself as one of the industry’s leading and diverse recruiting companies. arts and culture. Clarke believes that to find leadership talent now, museums must move beyond the assumption that prior museum experience is necessary – and two of his recent internships prove it: Alphonso Atkins Jr., the very first officer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art DEI, joined the museum from the University of South Carolina Upstate, where he was Head of Diversity and the School’s Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion, and Lavita McMath Turner, the first head of diversity at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was recruited into the network of the City University of New York.
“The standard post [taken by employers] is an expectation of previous museum experience because the assumption is that the person must understand the exhibit or curatorial operations to be successful, ”said Clarke. “But very few arts organizations before two years ago had DEI leadership, reducing your applicant pool to less than five people – and everyone in 2019 and 2020 wants those people.”
Clarke and Larry Griffin, a longtime leader in the recruiting industry, founded Bridge Partners in 2003 with a diverse recruiting mission initially in the for-profit sector: CEOs, Executive Directors, Board members, and plus, at companies like Barnes & Noble, Estée Lauder and Starbucks. Some of their clients hold seats on the boards of philanthropic foundations, and from those positions of power, a few have become bewildered by the homogeneity at the table. Around 2007, a client and board member of the Jackie Robinson Foundation approached them to help them diversify the leadership of the organization. Non-profit consulting has gradually been added to the company’s repertoire. It took nearly a decade, however, before they burst into museums and other artistic institutions.
Clarke, who has a background in art history, described the first encounters with arts organizations as a series of starts and stops, a lukewarm interest that heated up around 2016, a year after that first Mellon study. . In one of the first cases, the Newark Museum of Art asked for help in building a leadership team reflecting the city’s residents, more than half of whom identify as black.
The founders of Bridge Partners, Tory Clarke and Larry Griffin.
Courtesy Bridge Partners
“I started to envision inclusion before the onset of what I call ‘the second pandemic’, the moral pandemic of racial inequity,” said Newark Museum of Art director and CEO Linda Harrison. She first contacted Bridge Partners when looking for a new CFO, traditionally one of the least diverse positions in the arts and culture industry.
“As a black leader of a large museum and drawn from the corporate world, I have often been the only person of color in the room or on the team. It is a difficult position. The work is hard already, and now you are working very hard because you have to deal with these extra issues, ”Harrison said. “Of the research companies we spoke with, Bridge Partners seemed the most sensitive to this. In 2019, Bridge Partners helped Harrison recruit Sayaka Araki, who had worked for the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and the Garden Museum in New York City as CFO and Deputy Director of Infrastructure.
Newark has an Inclusion Initiatives Manager – Natasha Baruah, who was recruited internally – but her position was designed with an emphasis on collaboration: a working group made up of staff from each department meets regularly. to plan events such as unconscious bias workshops and listening sessions. In this way, said Harrison, it is not “for people of color alone to correct the wrongs of a museum.”
“I’m of course in favor of hiring people of color as diversity officers,” Harrison continued, “but that’s not the only place we should see people of color in a museum. “If we are serious about breaking down institutional racism and opening the door to fairness, we cannot expect a single Diversity Officer to come along and save the day. We have to spread the work across the organization.”
Bridge Partners is not the only firm advising museums on change. Sarah James, a consultant at Phillips Oppenheim, one of the leading arts and culture research companies, said there are new expectations for museums. “The young generation of museum visitors and workers expect fairness, parity, so that their museum is an ambitious place.” Recruiters like James and Clarke say that by finding matches for highly desirable candidates, they ensure that institutions are committed to long-term fairness and that administrators and administrators will invest time and money. money in professional development.
Even as institutions strive to correct systemic inequalities, they need to consider how they hire. Last February, Charles Venable, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Newfields, resigned after widespread criticism of a high-profile job posting referring to a mandate to “… attract more audiences. broad and more diverse while maintaining tradition, core audience and white art… ”Clarke said her team advises throughout the hiring process and helps HR shape job postings – suggesting, for For example, that previous experience in a museum, while welcome, is optional – to attract the widest range of applicants.
Bridge Partners, itself a diverse company, also tries to ensure that the interview panel, which often runs multiple rounds, includes staff of color. It has become evident in recent years that having people of color in decision-making and policy-making positions makes a big difference. Under Sandra Jackson-Dumont, director and CEO of the future Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, six women of color have been appointed to leadership positions in its curatorial, events and education departments. Mentorship programs also help underrepresented people find the support of professionals who understand their struggle and share their lived experience. In theory, this also helps to create an employment channel for groups historically excluded from professional opportunities. The Guggenheim, for example, started an internship program in 2017 for New York City high school students to receive a stipend while working at the facility.
While employers are generally receptive to her advice, Clarke said she always braces for a pushback, which is inevitably part of the job of dispelling assumptions about who has the potential to excel in an institutional setting. The firm advocates skill sets that emphasize collaboration, education and strategic thinking. However, inadvertently, their clients sometimes expect a reflection of themselves.
“But that’s why we have a consistent leadership profile across many great institutions in the Western world,” Clarke said. “Because people tend to orient themselves towards their comfort zone, what is [they’ve] always known.
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