First person: Pittsburgh’s museums have a diversity problem

Compelling personal stories
told by the people living them.

Pittsburgh art museums have a problem. The artists they amplify and the staff they employ are not diverse enough, which means that our communities and our city as a whole suffer as a result. Because our museums don’t accurately reflect our population, many of our residents aren’t being served.

I have the privilege of working for or alongside three art museums in Pittsburgh in marketing, education and curating roles. Because of this, I see firsthand the need for varied voices in the room. I’ve seen how we aren’t as effective as we could be because we’re missing representation.

In recent years, as public discourse around diversity has increased, museums around the world, including in Pittsburgh, haven’t been shy about admitting their shortcomings and vowing to do better. While there have been a lot of thinkpieces, panel discussions and declarations that have amounted to nothing, some institutions have succeeded in doing better, even if that means they’ve started doing things they should’ve been doing all along.

In 2017, the Ford Foundation and Walton Family Foundation launched a $6 million initiative to diversify museum leadership, funding programs at 22 museums including Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, which focused their efforts on youth outreach, internships and mentoring. In 2019, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Alice L. Walton Foundation and Ford Foundation gave $4 million in grants to assist 51 museums in making their board membership more diverse and inclusive. The Baltimore Art Museum recently sold works by the likes of Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg to create space for artists of color and women. Carnegie Museum of Art [CMOA] has made significant efforts to diversify programming and galleries and has been open to having critical conversations on their platforms.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT:

First person: Pittsburgh’s museums have a diversity problem.