October 15, 2020

Executive Summary

NOMA stands against all forms of racism. We are fully committed to fostering an equitable, anti-racist culture.

Beginning in June, the museum staff and board leadership began a comprehensive response to issues raised in the community through the Black Lives Matter movement and comments related to our structure and operations.

Here follows a comprehensive review and summary of the actions we have taken thus far in response to assertions along with key issues raised by our own board and staff members. Our Agenda for Change is available on the NOMA website and we will continue to provide regular updates on our progress as we move forward with various initiatives.

 

Workplace Environment and Employee Experience

In order to support an optimal workplace environment as well as anoptimal employee and visitor experience and in response to the overall tenor of this time of COVID-19 and social unrest, in the last 90 days NOMA has:

1. Initiated Intensive Staff Training. NOMA has contracted with a women and a people of color led non-profit organization to provide training and consultancy in diversity, inclusion and multiculturalism. They conducted staff training in effective cross-cultural dialogue in August, and will continue to work with NOMA for the next 18 months to assist in creating a NOMA culture of practicing equity, pluralism and inclusion.

2. Provided Third-Party Employee Relations Resource for Employees. A third-party human resources firm is providing ombudsman services for NOMA employees in employee relations matters. This independent, third-party entity is available to our employees through a 1-800 number. They will provide written reports of their investigations and findings for all complaints made to management and a Board committee.

3. Contracted with a nationally known anti-racist training and organizing institution to conduct anti-bias, race training for all employees. The first segment of training will be completed by the end of September with additional, two-day sessions for all staff scheduled for January 2021.

4. Provided supervisor training for middle management, including a focus on respect in the workplace, on September 21, 2020 with additional coaching available thereafter.

5. Retained local Black-owned communications strategy firm to provide guidance and counsel with expanding our marketing and public relations efforts to attract diverse audiences and candidates for employment.

6. Launched an internal staff portal in August for information sharing as well as a virtual bulletin board for staff comments and discussion.

7. Reviewed and revised hiring practices to include broader outreach to potential candidates; affirmation of NOMA’s Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion policy to applicants and the internal search committees;internal education about representation and inclusion in job groups; revision of candidate evaluation forms; and practices to ensure objective assessments.

 

Board Development and Inclusion

1. NOMA has committed to increasing the representation of BIPOC on our board to 25% each year over the next three years. The Governance Committee is currently in the process of recruiting the 2021 board class. The class will be announced in November and we believe that our efforts will ensure that our leadership is representative of the community we serve.

2. Board members are participating in two-day anti-bias, anti-racist workshops as are the leaders of our volunteer groups and our senior management.

 

Permanent Collection and Acquisitions

Since late 2010 and with the creation of a largely new curatorial team in the ensuing five years, NOMA has worked strategically to diversify its permanent collection holdings in each curatorial department.

This has led to the acquisition of major works by internationally renowned artists of color, including Odili Donald Odita (commission for NOMA’s centennial, 2011), Yinka Shonibare (museum purchase for Sculpture Garden, 2014), McArthur Binion (museum purchase), Leonardo Drew (museum commission), Fred Wilson (museum purchase for Sculpture Garden), Radcliff Bailey (museum purchase), Gordon Parks (museum gift/ purchase), Thornton Dial (museum gift/purchase)l, Mildred Thompson (museum purchase), Toyin Ojin Odutolah (museum purchase), Hank Willis Thomas (museum purchase for Sculpture Garden, 2017-18), Torkwase Dyson (museum purchase), Roberto Lugo (museum commission, 2020), and Wangichi Mutu (museum purchase for Sculpture Garden, 2020).

Equally significant, NOMA has worked to expand our holdings of works by local and regional BIPOC artists, who had been under-represented in our collections, including: John Isiah Walton, Ron Bechet, L. Kasimu Harris, Willie Birch, Ana Hernandez, Lorna Williams, Abdul Aziz, Eric Waters and Akasha Rabut, among others. Many of these artists enjoy a rising national and international reputation as well.

As part of NOMA’s Agenda for Change, the museum allocated the remaining 2020 acquisition funds to local and national BIPOC artists and will continue this commitment through 2021 and beyond. As an encyclopedic institution with responsibility for a broad historical collection, this commitment to contemporary, living artists is significant.

NOMA’s permanent collection currently on view also highlights BIPOC artists in most galleries where the collection has benefited from the active, focused diversification of the acquisition program: decorative arts, 19th century, African, Asian, Indian, modern, contemporary, and photography. We will continue to incorporate these voices into our galleries with regular rotations and re-installations as we re-examine the canon of art history and its relationship to the presentation of collections.

 

Greenwood Parlor

Since the 1980s, NOMA has used a sequence of galleries along its mezzanine to explore taste and style in Louisiana from the 18th through late 19th centuries through the installation of furniture and decorative arts. A re-installation of these spaces was initiated in 2013, when we began to update both the installations and the interpretation. At much the same time, NOMA was offered the opportunity to acquire a suite of furniture and soft-furnishings from the Greenwood Plantation in St. Francisville, a rare, intact assemblage of mid-19th century material that, although manufactured in the Northeast, embodied Louisiana taste of the time.

In 2015, we presented this material in a special summer exhibition, and subsequently made plans to install it permanently on the mezzanine. The interpretation for the material changed substantially between 2015 and late December 2019, when we opened the new gallery. In the 2019 iteration, we focused the interpretive components on the enslaved labor that allowed for the accumulation of wealth by the owners of the Greenwood Plantation. Using archival documents (including census records and documents kept by Greenwood descendants) our curator of decorative arts was able to identify by name many of the individuals whose forced labor had long been unacknowledged. These records, and these names, are displayed prominently on the walls of the gallery.

As our re-opening in July 2020 approached, criticism of NOMA as having a “plantation mentality,” precipitated a temporary closure, and a full reconsideration of the appropriateness of the gallery for our community at this time. While the scholarship is sound, and the acclaim for this progressive, innovative approach to presenting and interpreting 19th-century American decorative arts has been heralded throughout the field (nationally and internationally), it was clear that NOMA had not taken into consideration the potential for hurt and harm to our local and regional stakeholders.

We do not want the parlor to be either a flashpoint or a distraction from the work we are doing to issues regarding social justice and racial equity, and their impact on the arts. Consequently, we have closed the Parlor, and are examining the possibilities for re- interpretation, re-opening, or for another use of the space entirely. We have developed vehicles for public response within the museum and via the website, and are working with local universities and community organizations to hear their concerns and critique.

 

Exhibition History

NOMA’s special exhibitions, installations, and permanent collection rotations routinely highlight and feature works by BIPOC artists. Below is a partial list: