Museum Reform and Activism in Crisis: An Interview with Fisher and Godoy

In an interview with artpress, curator Michelle Millar Fisher and artist Camilo Godoy discuss the future of US museums amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests. Fisher, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and co-founder of Art + Museum Transparency, and Godoy, an artist and educator at the Whitney Museum and Recess, argue that the crises expose systemic issues in museums, including lack of diversity, low wages, and contradictions between progressive rhetoric and exploitative labor practices. They cite examples of museums that prioritized employees, such as the Walters Art Museum and Oakland Museum of Art, versus those that laid off staff, like the MoMA. They advocate for three demands: renegotiating executive salaries, democratizing decision-making, and unionization, noting the Philadelphia Museum of Art's recent union drive. They highlight initiatives like the #museumlayoffs hashtag, Eben Haines's Shelter in Place Gallery, and Guadalupe Maravilla's fundraising for undocumented immigrants. They call for a New Deal-style federal arts program akin to the WPA and FAP, which supported photographers like Berenice Abbott, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks. The interview references Fred Wilson's "Mining the Museum" (1992) and the ACT UP exhibition at White Columns (2010) as historical parallels.