Getty Museum Trustees Bend to Social-Justice Pressure

I’ve written about the avalanche of open letters from museum staffs accusing their directors and boards of racism. It’s a twin phenomenon. First, staff are about preserving and interpreting art, not performing social work. It’s incredible to me that people working even at the Getty, a California miracle and a treasure trove of art, want to change the mission and focus on “eradicating white supremacy.” Don’t they like art? Second, staff taking a grievance, in public, over the head of the director, to the trustees, was once a nuke-level insurgence followed by warp-speed retaliation.

Call it empowerment, narcissism, or self-righteousness, but these days everyone has a bullhorn. I’ve read letters and petitions targeting the leadership at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, the MFA in Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and many others. Some of the grievances in these letters seem legitimate, some irrelevant, and some silly.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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I’ve written about the avalanche of open letters from museum staffs accusing their directors and boards of racism. It’s a twin phenomenon. First, staff are about preserving and interpreting art, not performing social work. It’s incredible to me that people working even at the Getty, a California miracle and a treasure trove of art, want to change the mission and focus on “eradicating white supremacy.” Don’t they like art? Second, staff taking a grievance, in public, over the head of the director, to the trustees, was once a nuke-level insurgence followed by warp-speed retaliation.

Call it empowerment, narcissism, or self-righteousness, but these days everyone has a bullhorn. I’ve read letters and petitions targeting the leadership at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, the MFA in Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and many others. Some of the grievances in these letters seem legitimate, some irrelevant, and some silly.