To Bear Witness: Real Talk about White Supremacy in Art Museums Today

Fred Wilson, Guarded View, 1991. Photograph by Sheldan C. Collins. Copyright © Fred Wilson and courtesy of the Pace Gallery.

In a an essay for Burnaway, Dr. Kelli Morgan points to the history (and current reality) of museums as material extensions of oppressive systems that have continuously shut out BIPOC. Dr. Morgan stresses that these institutions cannot change without examining their discriminatory value systems, and discusses her personal efforts to make connections with the BIPOC communities that museums neglect.

"To produce a genuine institutional and disciplinary culture of DEI in museums, white museum professionals must do the work within themselves and within their institutions to heal the trauma that has resulted from decades of building an art historical narrative and literally thousands of arts institutions that are steeped in the values of white patriarchal supremacy."