“When we shut down in March 2020, we pivoted our programming immediately,” MCA director Madeleine Grynsztejn wrote in a recent column for Art in America. The most important new programming was “The Long Dream,” a wide-ranging exhibition featuring more than 70 local artists, which was meant to reflect the museum’s “commitment to equity.” “When most institutions were furloughing their front-facing employees, we went in the opposite direction,” she wrote, going on to list the ways the museum has supported staff since the pandemic began, such as allowing visitor services staff to work from home and offering anti-racism workshops.
Ngo didn’t learn about the letter until she was at the “Alien vs. Citizen” opening on July 17. Ngo and Truong sent Grynsztejn their own private letter that week expressing support for MCAccountable’s demands. “We ask that you recognize the direct connection between the demands of institutional reckonings with white supremacy and the demands of workers for safety and pay equity in the face of the coronavirus,” they wrote. Grynsztejn thanked the artists for their letter, and then directed them to curatorial staff with any further concerns. Ultimately the artists did not reach out, noting that the curator was more or less powerless to change anything.
As a result, the artists, two monumental local talents (Gaspar is a 2021 USA Fellow, Sifuentes is an artist-in-residence at Loyola University), withdrew. “For me what was so unsettling about it is like, these are a lot of young, BIPOC employees making very legitimate and really strong points in terms of the inequities that are in the museum itself, and asking for action and accountability,” Sifuentes says. “The demand is ultimately just for a meeting with Madeleine, the director. That she’s refusing to meet with her staff just is crazy to me.”
Jina Valentine, an artist in “The Long Dream,” noted the lack of specificity in museum communications. “There’s very little transparency, if any transparency, about what the administration’s actually doing to address that set of demands,” she says. “What are you doing actually? What are the concrete steps you have taken to address these concerns?”
Others questioned the museum’s framing of the layoffs as a budget issue, as reported by ArtNews. In 2020, the museum received a $2 million loan through the government’s Paycheck Protection Program, and in September, the museum received a $2.5 million award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the largest foundation grant in its history, meant in part to help accelerate the museum’s commitments to the values of “inclusion, diversity, equity, and access.” In her July conversation with the Tribune, Grynsztejn mentioned the budget for the year had been cut by $8 million. In a statement to the Reader, the museum said senior leadership has taken pay cuts during “this tough time,” though to what extent is unclear. According to the museum’s 2018 tax returns, Grynsztejn’s total compensation was $690,376, her base pay $625,908.
A statement provided by the MCA read in part, “We consistently feature the work of female, BIPOC, and LGBTQ artists and are deeply committed to supporting the arts community in which we live and serve, and encourage voices that can lead to social change.” While the museum says it considers MCA employees and exhibiting artists part of that community, it is clear many do not feel supported by the museum. Current and former staff in MCAccountable, many of whom are artists themselves, have outlined the ways the museum fails to support them in their letters, which hundreds of others have added their signatures to. Dozens of other artists, who are now showing or have shown at the museum, have also spoken out about the ways the museum is in fact committing harm to its community.
