The killing of George Floyd, the tens of thousands of protesters in the streets, and the demands of Black Lives Matter organizers and other civic leaders around the country had an unexpected impact in the summer of 2020. On museums.
Cultural institutions accustomed to the drowsy if inexorable march of history and the artists who have responded over the centuries in paint, ceramics, textiles, or steel were suddenly forced to respond to a long-simmering slew of challenges and demands: What is their purpose? Who decides? How are they funded and why? Will they respond to cultural and demographic changes and when?
All of these questions have been stewing—unresolved—in scholarly articles, at conferences, and in university curricula for decades. For reasons both legitimate and not, the questions gained urgency last summer and led to the resignations of museum directors, curators, and board members nationwide. Some museums stonewalled, some fought back, and some responded with surprising resilience.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has done the latter. After more than a year of being shuttered owing to statewide restrictions, it opened last spring with one of the most diverse presentations of any museum in Southern California: a survey of Japanese neo-pop artist Yoshitomo Nara’s work, a multimedia installation by Afrofuturist Cauleen Smith, a 1992 installation by video art pioneer Bill Viola that’s owned by the museum, huge negative images of original LACMA buildings taken by conceptual photographer Vera Lutter, and an augmented-reality piece by Indigenous artist Mercedes Dorame about the Tongva people’s heritage and the tribal land where the museum now stands.
Such shows did not come about as a result of instantaneous soul-searching. Michael Govan, the CEO and director of the museum, believes that big changes in thinking and action are essential to the relevance of all museums:
