Chaédria LaBouvier & the Guggenheim

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose. I am someone who did not go to art school, but I love learning about art and art museums. And increasingly on this show, we are here to call out art museums, so hello.

Betty: Hi, I'm Betty. I'm also someone who didn't go to art school, but I have been working at an art museum for the last eight years. And I also think I have been calling out a lot of art museums, but you know, they can take it. 

Quinn: So this is actually part two of a two-part series on the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and specifically an exhibit that was done at the Guggenheim curated by Chaédria LaBouvier. So if you've not listened to part one, which focused on Basquiat and the exhibit itself, you should go do that now. And you can come back and listen to part two, which is going to talk more specifically about LaBouvier and her experiences at the Guggenheim. So to sort of set the stage with this, LaBouvier has actually been researching Basquiat since she was 18 years old. She's now 34, which by the way, is so young to be this accomplished and I'm very impressed by her. And she's considered like a leading scholar on Basquiat and has done incredible work sort of throughout this whole, like decade and a half studying him, bringing his works into new contexts, both starting in school and like leading all through her professional life so far. So in 2016, she did a show at the Williams College Museum of Art about Basquiat and his work. Which also by the way, she went to college at Williams. And in 2016, I believe in sort of conjunction with the show that she curated, she spoke on a—well she moderated and kind of led a panel on Basquiat specifically about Defacement. Which will be linked in the show notes, it’s super interesting. There are two other Basquiat scholars talking with her. And the crowd has like the least strong grip on the idea of a “question, not a comment” I've maybe ever seen, but the actual speakers themselves are very, very interesting. So if you want greater insight into Basquiat and his work, like definitely watch that.

Betty: And I’ll skip the comments section, the Q&A section when I watch it.

Quinn: Just skip to their answers. Anyway, closing those parentheses sidebars, back to her timeline. So in 2016, yes, she does the show at the Williams College Museum of Art. And this is how she kind of got a little bit more attention out of the New York art world, which of course is a big center of art. Including by a woman named Nancy Spector, who is the artistic director and chief curator at the Guggenheim in New York City. LaBouvier actually said that she was primarily interested in taking the show to Black museums and universities, but she basically didn't get it picked up there anywhere. And Spector was very interested in bringing the show to the Guggenheim. So she said, okay, like you guys want the work, like, I want to bring the work where the work wants to be seen. So I will work with you. And of course, you know, it's the Guggenheim. And the backdrop to all of this is—she said that she definitely knew going in—is that the Guggenheim has done very little work in exhibiting Black artists and working with Black curators. So she knew that they had problems in the past, and they were talking extensively about wanting to correct these problems and to lead a better way forward. And her exhibit was going to be, I guess, one of the beginning attempts to kind of right this path and to make sure that they were representing all kinds of different artists and other people working in the art world, like curators, to their full extent and not just centering white artists. So definitely keep that in mind, as we talk about sort of her experiences a little later, but this is in 2018 and she starts working with the Guggenheim to bring a full Basquiat exhibit to this museum.

Betty: Yeah, as you said, the Guggenheim does not have a very big or even small history of featuring Black artists, or even inviting Black curators into their staff. So there, she was the first Black curator in Guggenheim’s 80 year history, not just Black female curator. However, there was a curator who was a co-curator of a 1996 photography exhibition. His name was—I apologize—Okwui Enwezor. And so in any case, because he was a co-curator, he wasn't like the only curator, you know, technically she was the first—they called her solo curator, which was a really like weird way of putting it because you would never really call somebody that, you would just say the curator, or co-curators if there are more than one. And maybe the Guggenheim was just trying to highlight that this is like the first time a Black person is exclusively curating a show, you know, which is fine, but it's also like, could you, can you just call her curator?

Quinn: Yeah that’s—there are going to be lots of different things in this story that we're telling you right now that are like on their own are like, “that's a little weird,” but not necessarily like a horrible offense, but when—and some of them are more, some of them are definitely more offensive than others, but like there's a lot—there’s also just like a lot of little things that you're like, why are you doing this? And they start adding up and you start seeing the pattern. That's like, ugh.

Betty: Yeah. Like, obviously if this was one thing or if one of the few things you might think, oh, like, why are they being so picky about like small stuff, but it's like, yeah, it's definitely not the only “weird,” to use that term, thing that has that occurred during this. But anyway, it is good to sort of know, like the backstory of like how it is a very rare occurrence for Black artists or Black curators to be working in the Guggenheim or be featured. But, you know, obviously that's not just a Guggenheim problem. That’s every museum or gallery or institution in North America problem. And the effort to try to be more inclusive is, I think appreciated by most people, if not everyone who is not racist. So yeah, like I think as institutions around the world and around, especially like Canada and the US, are at least like actively trying to review their collections and their staff to just see, you know, is it possible that we can include some other voices. I think that's, you know, that's definitely not something that's a problem. And definitely initially LaBouvier was very excited to work with the Guggenheim and it would appear, like she tweeted about it. And when she started working on it and yeah, just the idea of being able to have her show to a bigger audience in general is something that she definitely was like very interested in.

Quinn: Yeah, absolutely. And so I mean, things start out looking good and looking like an example of positive progress. And then there are these little weird things that start cropping up, like the solo curator kind of language note that was like, why are you, why are you making this title that isn't sort of an industry standard title? That seems kind of weird. And then she started talking more, sort of near the end of the exhibit’s run at the Guggenheim, about her experiences there. And it kind of seems like there are two primary kind of categories of things that happened. One is sort of, in the creation of the exhibition, she talks extensively about her experiences with Nancy Spector, who is the person who scouted her exhibit in the first place. LaBouvier said one of the essential facts of this whole thing is that she did not give up her copyright over her work. And she retained her copyright rather than sell it or sign it over in any way, which means that like she has fundamental power over her work and her exhibit, and also supposed to have fundamental control over it. And she detailed—there’ll be a couple of different threads linked in the description, but in one particular thread that she wrote on June 3rd, she went pretty far in detail on talking about the way that she, as she put it, Nancy specter was trying to “co-opt” her work. They were sending out loan letters to request for different pieces that did not accurately represent LaBouvier’s involvement into this exhibit—which actually she said made it more difficult to get pieces because the people who owned the paintings weren't seeing like the personal scholarship that had gone into the exhibit, they were just seeing sort of like this broader idea of the Guggenheim rather than her as like a leading Basquiat scholar, which obviously was like very important to this. There were different points in which like she was not given access to things that she needed or like stuff that she wanted to happen in the exhibits. Like she wanted to have extended captions that explained the work and why they were chosen. And those were not allowed to be put into the exhibition—which I, on a personal note, I hate it when there is not like full explanations of it, because I want to know what the work is in context, and so like… ugh.

Betty: That, just on that specific note, that is like a weird, like art gallery thing. Like so many curators or interpretive planners who generally are the people kind of, sort of in charge of like doing those captions under the guide of the curator, don't like to explain, they really like bare walls and like just a title. And not everyone's like this, like certain galleries and certain interpretive planners and curators are definitely more okay and more interested in giving more information and backstory AND context, which almost all viewers universally like. But yeah, like there's just, it's like a weird thing where certain institutions are so like, oh, we want the work to speak for itself. And it's like, yeah, sure, some cases yes, maybe if you know that's kind of a super open to interpretation type of work, sure. But so many artworks, like it's just so much better to like have context. Although the caveat to this is, I guess if every single piece of work had like extensive descriptions, I wouldn't have a job. Cause like it’s literally what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to walk around and tell them, this is what this is about, or this is the backstory and this is something else you can think about. So maybe, I don't know, I guess maybe the curator or the institutions was looking out for the gallery guides, but I doubt that's the reason.

Quinn: That's really funny actually. But yeah, and I mean, like on a personal level, I think that all exhibits should have these and then on sort of a moral level, like obviously it should be up to the curator one way or another. It's just like extra—I’m just extra personally, I'm mad on her behalf because she also, it's also like a position that I agree. And even at this point, it's unclear whether or not she would have even publicly spoken out about these experiences and these real difficulties in working with the Guggenheim, especially with Nancy Spector specifically, until the treatment that she got when the exhibit was actually running. She did some interviews and she talked extensively about the work and how proud she was of the exhibit that she was able to make. But after everything happened, she gave lots of examples of her being shut out from the presentation of her own work. She had a journalist that like confirmed and she has a screenshot confirming that journalists were being told that she was unavailable for press even though she absolutely was. So she was being shut out of being able to talk about her own work. And then the kind of culmination of all of this, and the first time that she really went public with everything was a panel that happened in early November, sort of right at the culmination of this exhibit. So the panel was not exactly specifically on her exhibition, but it was on the topics of her exhibit at the same time as her exhibit. And like, obviously like very drawn on her scholarship and on the exhibit itself. And she was not invited to it.

Betty: Yeah. It just seems like there, there was a very abnormal level of like not letting her participate and not letting her speak, especially to journalists and other media. I think I read, one specific Black publication, I think it's like either a magazine or a newspaper, or like an art review type of publication that said like, you know, they tried to contact her, but they were told the same thing that she's not available. But then later, when they did get to speak with LaBouvier after the show had like ended, she was like, no, I was totally available. And they, they just prevented me from speaking to media. Especially she said like a Black run media, which was like, you know, obviously really weird because of course a lot of Black publications would be super interested in this show and would want her comment, like why would you write this whole article and not get any feedback from the curators? So like there's, there's just, there was so much blocking of her participation and, and generally, yeah, like working on the inside of like a lot of museum shows, like the curators, like quite often, front and center and you see them participate in a lot of things. Like the only reason they wouldn't be around a lot is if they had like, if there were like sick or something or had like a personal problem. But the thing is like, there were also other things that were done without her knowledge or input. Like they put together a Spotify playlist for the show, but like, she didn't even know about it. Like obviously the curator doesn't have to do every single thing. Like there's other people who work on the show. Like, she's not literally—she didn't put up the paintings herself. Not to say that like other people can't do stuff. But I think that the fact that she wasn't even aware of these, like media and things that were put in the show is like really weird. She found out afterwards was posted online and is like, what? And again, like, I think because of the relationship between Basquiat and music like hip hop and jazz and, and how relevant it was to the New York scene in the eighties, like it would have been very important for the curator to have at least some say in the Spotify playlist. So, yeah, so like that’s just really weird. And yeah, there were other things like a digital guide and digital products that like, she was also not asked to participate in.

Quinn: Also on that note that you mentioned a minute ago about, you know, she didn't physically hang up the paintings, which, you know, yeah. But one of the other specific transgressions that she names was actually that she was not included in the de-installation process, which is an industry standard. Like just it's incredibly odd that she wasn’t included in this. And I don't know enough about de-installation processes to know why this is so important. But it's not even that, like some curators do this and she was not invited for that kind of thing, but like, she's like, no, it's like all curators preside over the de-installation, but for some reason I didn’t. And that was one of the things like, again, like at the end of the exhibit, that sort of was the culmination of all of the mistreatment and being shut out that she had suffered from.

Betty: There was just like a lot of other stuff. Like, you know, most of the times the curators will give like tours. Like, I don't know exactly what the Guggenheim has, but in, at the AGO, we have this thing called the Curator’s Circle, which is, it's like a membership, but like you pay quite a bit more to participate in like a private tour by the, by the curator. And yeah, it happens for every exhibit and the curator, you know, would take people who paid quite a bit more money to support the museum on these tours. And she didn't, she wasn't asked to do that. So it was just like, I mean, in a way, like you might think, oh, this person's just complaining about like, you know, she didn't get to do a tour or she didn't get to be there when they take down the paintings, but it's like, it's just weird because it's, it's an industry standard. Like everyone does these things or just about everyone, but then this person is like, no, yeah, don't, don't come. And yeah, that's just, and they don't really give an explanation. Like I have a feeling things probably started to sour towards the end of the exhibition, you know, because obviously she started to speak up about some of the problems she was having and maybe like, I don't know, somebody got pissed off and was like, let's just tell her to go away. And don't even let her back in to watch the exhibition get de-installed. So like, again, we don't know exactly what happened internally, but, it does seem like towards the end, it was not a good situation.

Quinn: Yikes. Yeah the sort of biggest public moment that happened until June of this year, which—put a pin in that for one sec. But she actually publicly confronted them at the panel that she was not invited to speak at. And of course at the panel, like the people up there spoke extensively about her work and recognized everything that she had done. And then I believe in the sort of the Q&A section—there’s a video linked in the show notes—of her confronting the management of the Guggenheim and the response from the… And the president of the Guggenheim was there and responded to her. And the response was basically, “we did recognize your work and this panel was organized before your exhibit was organized and sometimes curators are on these kinds of things, and we have recognized your work and your work is good. Thanks.” It's such a weird response and it like doesn't actually acknowledge the real problems that she was talking about in her speech. There's also like a whole situation involved in the actual hiring of the first Black staff curator at the Guggenheim that happened right at this time. And I don't think we're gonna get too far into that because like, we do have runtime constraints on this podcast. But like there's even more going on and we're even getting into yeah. But just to like keep the focus kind of specifically on Chaédria. This was the first time that she, that, like, she really got real attention publicly with this whole situation. And probably since she was actually speaking out and fighting back against all of the racism that she had experienced, and so this did probably sour her relationship with the Guggenheim. Uh, sucks to suck Guggenheim.

Betty: In addition to, yeah, to all these things. And she did confront them and stuff like that, there was something that I also noticed when I was researching. So, though Guggenheim did release like a response to her criticisms, and they basically, yeah, like, again, like you said, they just said no, like we, we do appreciate her work. We did properly credit her. She, you know, her name was on the exhibition and they, then they said… she is credited as the author on the cover of her, the exhibition catalog that she wrote. But the problem is it's like, yes, on the cover, it says the exhibition of the show. And it says Chaédria LaBouvier. But the rest of the title when you look on it, I think the sleeve, or maybe the back or especially when you're going on their online store in the catalog, it says Basquiat’s Defacement: The Untold Story. It lists Chaédria first, but then it has Nancy Spector and three other—wait, four other people for the author. And then it says with contributions by other people. So like the contribution is, is fine cause obviously more other people wrote essays in the book. But she was the editor of the book, she wrote most of the essays, she wrote the exhibition catalog, but Nancy Spector and other people were credited as the, as coauthors. Again, I'm not saying that, like obviously more than one person can write a book. But according to LaBouvier, essentially I think it would have made more sense to say like contributions maybe by Nancy Spector and so and so if they had written parts of the book or maybe, I don't know if there were, I didn't read this book, so I should probably do that before specifically say like, you know what it is. But yeah, like it's just weird they say, yeah, we credited you as the author, but it's like, no, no, you put me as coauthors with four other people when I wrote the vast majority, if not like, you know, pretty much the whole catalog.

Quinn: And hard to say, like in all of these examples that we've discussed and reviewed—and there are even more if you keep digging into her case and all of her experiences with the Guggenheim. It's hard to say, like, were any of these conscious decisions on behalf of people like Nancy Spector to try to diminish her work? Were they exploiting the fact that she is a Black woman, and has traditionally held less power in the art world. Were they trying to downplay their own history in the past by downplaying the accomplishments of this woman? Or like perhaps, maybe all of it was subconscious. Maybe it was just a lot of little things that kept adding up in ways that they thought it was okay to diminish her work because of broader situations that they were in or trying to protect their brand, or even just subconscious racism that they didn't necessarily “intend” to do. All that being said, I'm not super interested in the idea of like, ascribing intent to this situation. I don't know what's in anyone's hearts here or what they “intended” to do—please hear the air quotes—but I'm looking at the outcome of what they did and the outcome of what they did was to severely diminish and try to, in many cases, obscure the work of an incredibly dedicated and talented curator, who not only did a tremendous achievement in reaching this position as the first Black curator at the Guggenheim, but also like by all counts, put together an amazing exhibit about a very successful Black artist. Like all of the, it's just like… [struggles for words] the absurdity, the absurdity of being like, so—the absurdity of diminishing the work of a Black curator doing a Basquiat exhibit is just too much, like, have you no shame?

Betty: Yeah. And, and I think obviously like working in any place or like, especially when you're, you know, working with leadership positions and directors and curators of, you know, quite internationally well known art gallery. Like you're going to come across people with like a lot of ego. I can see like a lot of people, like, you know, conscious or subconscious racism or not like wanting to put their own name, like on whatever, like a catalog or a show. Like they, they, everybody, you know, wants to be recognized as successful or whatever. And, and there's plenty of examples of people like, you know, taking credit from all kinds of other people. just cause they want to elevate themselves. Like again, you can see that maybe these other people were just like, they just wanted to, they just wanted like a success or career attention on them on themselves. Which is fine if you legitimately earned that success, but not fine if you're like, you know, kind of trying to take credit for things that other people did, or like partially take credit, you know, whether this other person is a Black person or not like, that's, I just think you shouldn't do that to anybody. But yeah, like I think especially when, when it is you know, somebody who has historically or a group of people who has historically been people who you would try to, you know, take credit from, and obscure their success. Like it really does kind of make it work even if you're just like, trying to do that to anybody cause you are full of yourself. And again, I'm not saying these people are, I don't know them. I don't know if they did do that, but it I'm just saying it's possible to come across these people. 

Quinn: Yeah, yeah. Whatever kind of level of like conscious or subconscious things were going on here—and I think it was probably a mix of both from various people at various times. But, but just the, the blatant ego involved on any level, and then especially the diminishment of the work of this incredible Black curator is shameful. The reason that we're talking about this right now, and the reason why this has become a little more widely known outside of New York art circles is because of a tweet that went semi-viral that LaBouvier made on June 2nd of 2020. This is when the Guggenheim posted “the Guggenheim is observing Blackout Tuesday, listening and grieving with the family of George Floyd and the many other Black lives that have been lost.” LaBouvier quote tweeted this with, “Get the entire f— out of here. I am Chaédria LaBouvier, the first Black curator in your 80 year history. And you refused to acknowledge that while also allowing Nancy Spector to host a panel about my work without inviting me. Erase this sh—. Please retweet.” Right now this has almost 40,000 retweets and 70,000 likes. She goes on to say, “This is the same museum that made up an imaginary designation of first solo Black curator because they were too afraid to admit they had not hired a Black curator to lead a show in 80 years and erased me in history and the process.”

So the Guggenheim has responded to this, not in a way that's like truly substantial or really worth reading right now. This has gotten a lot more eyes on this, and this is how this came across my Twitter feed and led us into like researching all of this stuff about Basquiat and LaBouvier. And so I certainly hope that changes are actually made at the Guggenheim. She's also tweeted in support of the workers in the union there. And that there are like many great people doing great work there, but there are serious problems with the leadership and the way that they're treating curators and other people there. So maybe there will be a revolution and we'll be able to reclaim the art museums for the people. But until that day, we're watching you Guggenheim and also all other white art museums.

Betty: Yeah, no, I think you're, yeah that's definitely, why not only, like Basquiat’s work is still relevant and why LaBouvier’s work is still relevant today. You know, despite this exhibition happening almost a year ago, and then obviously Basquiat's work being produced like almost four decades ago. And it is just, it's very, I think this is why it is just important to, like you mentioned it, this is why art museums are important. Like this is why it's important to, have these contextualized types of shows. And I definitely hope LaBouvier continues to curate shows. I hope she has better experiences in the future with people she works with. And I’ll certainly be interested in seeing another one of her shows somewhere in the future. 

Quinn: Yeah, absolutely. We'll definitely be keeping tabs on her work and when we can go outside again, I will hopefully be able to see her exhibits. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Pictorial. You can find our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial. And you can also find us on Twitter or Instagram at @PictorialPod. You can also find me on Twitter or Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsV. I'm also on YouTube at ARTiculations. And speaking of YouTube, we also upload these episodes to YouTube under Pictorial Podcast YouTube channel, where you can see pictures of what we speak about during the podcast as you're watching or listening through the show in video form. 

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts.