The Incredible Whiteness of Art-Museum Audiences

Here's a link to the article I referenced in today's discussion: http://bit.ly/hwDpkP. Niborama is a great blog to be aware of--it's written by the executive editor of ARTnews, Robin Cembalest.

Here's the text (to access links within the article, visit the blog):

"The recent New York Times story about an artist who turns couch surfing into relational aesthetics raised some interesting issues: in an age when the bunking at museums is becoming more commonplace—both as art piece and outreach—the idea of bringing the sleepover-art concept outside the walls of the museum seems quite logical. But it was after the jump, as we say in the biz, that the artist, who goes by the name Kenya (Robinson) [parenthesis intended], described a more revealing aspect of her relation to the mainstream art world. When she went to Marina Abramovic’s retrospective at MoMA, (Robinson) said, the guard told her she was a rare African-American face in the crowd. So (Robinson) organized groups of 15-20 people of color to come to the museum, she told the Times—but they never got to the front of the line to sit across from Abramovic. Given that lots of people never made it either, that unfortunately resonant metaphor seems less disappointing than the that fact museum demographics clearly remain out of whack with the general population. There are plenty of studies that bear this out—but a glance around most museums or art galleries will suffice.

Of course, as museum directors note, the percentages change when you’re talking about school groups—and, in a report that the American Association of Museums released today, 21.7 percent of museums surveyed spent more on K-12 education in 2010 than they did before. But that’s all museums, not just art museums—and it’s still not good enough. Yet when Arnold Lehman tries different ways to attract more diverse audiences to the Brooklyn Museum, he’s pilloried for not bringing in enough of them. “Only” 340,000 people? Maybe it’s the right 340,000.

Recent surveys trumpet the fact that museum attendance is rising—at least in some of the places at some of the time. But it’s urgent that museums keep trying different ways to attract more diverse audiences, until they get it right—and even if they get it wrong along the way. That means working to bridge the divide between curatorial and education departments until they figure out into how to convert those students into repeat visitors. It means acknowledging that admission fees are preventing those students from coming with their families—in LaPlaca Cohen’s study, 49 percent of respondents said they had decreased their attendance at cultural events because of the economy. (The AAM says the average museum admission fee is “just $7.”)

It also means that professional organizations dedicated to advocacy and networking start rethinking the admission rules and membership fees that turn away the very people they supposedly want to embrace. A look at the attendees at recent award ceremonies for the United States section of the International Association of Art Critics and ArtTable showed how much work remains to be done. Let’s put it this way: Not too many people looked like the guards."