Atlantic Writer Angers Museum Curator with ‘Dangerous,’ ‘Unethical’ Inquiry

Chaédria LaBouvier — who became the first black curator at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum in 2019 — reacted harshly to a recent inquiry about her experience at the museum made by Helen Lewis, a staff writer at the Atlantic.

LaBouvier has called her treatment by her colleagues at the museum, especially by former artistic director Nancy Spector, “the most racist professional experience of my life.”

According to LaBouvier, the museum’s leadership didn’t invite her to a panel discussion on the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose work she specializes in; took pains not to promote her exhibition; presented her work as their own; and even threatened to withhold her pay as retaliation for her sparring matches with Spector (though the email LaBouvier cites as evidence of this last allegation doesn’t suggest any wrongdoing by the museum).

After being publicly accused of racism, Spector resigned from her post of 34 years, even though an investigation conducted by an outside law firm found no evidence LaBouvier was “subject to adverse treatment on the basis of her race.”

Apparently interested in LaBouvier’s dealings with the allegedly racist museum staff, Lewis recently reached out to her for comment.

“Dear Chaedria, I’m a staff writer at the Atlantic and I’m writing about US museums and the racial reckoning of 2020. I plan to discuss your experience at the Guggenheim. Might we talk? I’m on hlewis@theatlantic.com . . . best wishes, Helen,” Lewis wrote in an email to LaBouvier, which the curator posted on Twitter.

LaBouvier responded with indignation, informing Lewis that she would not be speaking to her, given that her interest in the subject was “rapacious.”

“I am not interested in participating in a piece that through lack of expertise, thoroughness, research, or fortitude will resign me as a footnote and amplify a glorified publicity stunt. This is another example of a clueless, rapacious White woman, backed and resourced by a publication that has a history of harm — and harm against me — and attempting to rewrite history,” she said, before adding “f*** you . . . should you f*** this up — which you will — I will be on your ass like white on rice on a paper plate in a snowstorm at a KKK rally.”

Lewis asked LaBouvier to reconsider in her reply, while also reminding the curator that no part of their correspondence had been off the record.

This further incensed LaBouvier, who expressed a desire “to be incredibly clear again. F*** you.”

In a lengthy Twitter thread detailing the exchange, LaBouvier characterized “everything about her [Lewis’s] outreach and subsequent behavior” as “bullying/presumptive/unethical/unprofessional/arrogant and dangerously wrong,” in part because Lewis was “missing key & essential receipts that she will [never] get.”

She went on to express her displeasure with the Atlantic for passing on a story about her experience pitched by a black woman a couple of years back — and suggested that the magazine’s treatment of her was reminiscent of the British Empire’s colonialism.

“The irony is not lost . . . that, as the world unpacks the imperial and violent legacy of one British White woman using her immense power an institution to steal things and disfigure the historical record of said atrocities, here goes another BWW [Lewis] doing a parallel thing.”

She also reminded the Atlantic‘s CEO, Nicholas Thompson, that the journalism industry owed its very existence to her activism.

“My political legacy is such that it has subsidized the courage of entire industries,” she explained. “Even you stand on my work.”

National Review reached out to LaBouvier to ask what what was wrong with a reporter lacking “receipts” before speaking with a subject, what she believed Lewis had done wrong in her initial request, and what level of expertise a reporter should bring to a story about art curation.

LaBouvier declined to answer the questions, returning instead to the accusation she leveled first at Lewis: that the reporter asking the questions lacked the qualifications to do so.

“Hmmm. I am in no way, since I am working, able to answer these incredibly leading questions on an extremely complex topic, in good faith or even seriously,” she wrote. “In one case, you’re asking me to teach you what (ethical) reporting is, and although I have taught at the college level, your request to explain and qualify reporting is above and beyond one that I should field from a reporter and keep a straight face.”

She also expressed concern that National Review would not “present a fair and balanced report,” and instead opt to write “Helen Lewis fan fiction or a pulp fiction about The Atlantic.”

“I seriously doubt my answers would help your article or help elucidate the failures of ethical, researched and nuanced reporting enabled both a publisher and a write,” said LaBouvier.

On Twitter, LaBouvier provided screenshots of this exchange and said she expected a “yellow journalism article out of [National Review].”

“The Atlantic is ‘liberal’, the [sic] New Republic still thinks they’re William Buckley Republicans, but they are actually more alike than they are not in certain aspects and it’s hilarious to me that the writer thinks I distrust The Atlantic more than I distrust a broken system. . . . The writer asked me what sort of qualifications should a writer need to write about my experience, which is just, lolol,” she reflected.

The exact question posed to LaBouvier was: “How much expertise, in your opinion, should a journalist have going into a project like the one Lewis is working on?”

“I have always been consistent that I do not need journos, especially unqualified or inexperienced or late to the game journalists, to speak for me,” declared LaBouvier. “So I will speak for myself.”

And so she has.