It’s been a tumultuous few years for the art world. In the United States, the election of Donald Trump served as a moment of political awakening for many: Well-intentioned artists began to make explicitly political art—some of it quite moving, more of it not—and initiated or joined various organizing efforts. Institutions exhibited artists from communities further marginalized by Trump’s policies—the Museum of Modern Art’s 2017 rehang featuring works by artists from the Muslim-majority countries affected by Trump’s travel ban being a particularly visible example—and issued tepid statements celebrating diversity. More recently, last summer’s Black-led uprisings in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others by police set off a wave of public call-outs of (and clumsy, face-saving apologies by) art institutions for their discriminatory policies and the racist behavior of some among their leadership. And the Covid-19 pandemic has intensified many of the art world’s most frustrating contradictions: Ostensibly committed to progressivism, museums nonetheless laid off or furloughed tens of thousands of staffers across the country, squeezing even more labor from the few employees they have retained.
