Museums Are Not Neutral
Hello, all. Some of the links in this are missing because I copied it from a post on one of my other social medias, so I am very sorry. Some of you know, some don’t, but this semester I have taken on a research project covering stolen art from Southeast Asia. It has lead me to a great many discoveries, one of the greatest being the Museums Are Not Neutral movement. I wanted to share this amazing thing with you all.
The #MuseumsAreNotNeutral movement, started by La Tanya Autry and Mike Murawski, combats the idea that our museums are simply not neutral, despite the demands and claims that they are in fact balanced ground. People of color, women, the LGBTQ community, many are tossed and discarded by museums, with the exception of one they have kept to maintain the ability to deny any accusations.
In 1989, the Guerilla Girls, a contemporary feminist group of artists, completed a study for their work, "Do Women Have to be Naked to get into the Met?" (https://www.tate.org.uk/…/guerrilla-girls-do-women-have-to-…) They found that 5 percent of the art on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art was created by women, but 85 percent of the nude works on display were of women. Also, an interesting fact, in art exhibitions depicting nude bodies, they will more often put up a warning for male nudity than they will for female nudity. Unfortunately, it seems we have become desensitized to the sexualization and objectification of the female body.
A study published earlier this year (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6426178/), by a multitude of people that I will not name, but I encourage you to read the article in that link, shows that people of color are also struggling to be exhibited in American museums. 85 percent of the art displayed in American museums is done by white artists, and 87 percent of the art in those museums are done by men.
I must admit, I have not studied queer art in-depth. From what I have learned in my contemporary art history classes, I have learned that much of the queer art done has been wildly censored and shunned in the art community. While the stigma is slowly being overcome, there is still a "societal frown" covering the community.
La Tanya Autry says in her description of the Museums Are Not Neutral movement, "As museums are cultural products that originate from colonial enterprise, they are about power. They are political constructs. Their ongoing practices also are rooted in power. The very fact that this field has a long history of excluding and marginalizing people of color in terms of selection, interpretation, and care of art and other objects, jobs, visitor services, board representation, and more indicates that museums are political spaces. Everything in them and about them involves decisions."
This statement is what led me to find the movement. Southeast Asia was pummeled by colonialism. There is still work being found in museums today that was smuggled out of countries like China and India and Japan decades upon decades ago. It was Europe's power move, a sort of corrupted drive to be culturally educated. We learn about this early in our art history classes; We traveled to their countries, claiming it was an attempt to soak up even more knowledge, but it was also a financial boast to those you associated yourself with. Once it was realized that things over there could bring in so much money, colonialism had its way with the region. Southeast Asia was ravaged, different countries taking over for periods of time and leaving with whatever they pleased.
I encourage you to look into this Museums Are Not Neutral movement. They donate their proceeds to different organizations, at the moment they are donating to the Community Foundation of Greater Flint. This is a foundation helping Genesee County, enhancing living conditions and working to help the children there. As you know, Flint has also been in the midst of a water crisis. This foundation also works to combat that issue. You can find the foundation's site at this link https://www.cfgf.org/Our-Work-Impact/Current-Initiatives













