GIRLS 6

GIRLS MAGAZINE

CLIFFHANGER

MAY 2020

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 6

ISSUE 6, MAY 2020

GIRLS MAGAZINE CLIFFHANGER

Letter from the Editor ~ PAGE 3 Participant Biographies ~ PAGE 4 Sarah Loyer ~ PAGE 6 Dorothy Dรกvila ~ PAGE 9 V. Joy Simmons, MD ~ PAGE 12 Qianjin Montoya ~ PAGE 15

GIRLS MISSION STATEMENT GIRLS is a revised portfolio of interviews from a nationwide community of real, strong women. It's a magazine that is 100% all women, which is beautiful in its rarity - the magazine is a safe space FOR women ABOUT women. Created by Adrianne Ramsey, it serves as a content destination for millennial women. Read on for an engagement of feminist voices and a collaborative community for independent girls to discover, share, and connect.

FRONT AND BACK PAGE IMAGE CREDIT: BARBARA KRUGER, "UNTITLED (QUESTIONS)" 1990/2018

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

BY ADRIANNE RAMSEY In 2018, Klaus Biesenbach, newly appointed director of MOCA Los Angeles, initiated the re-install of Barbara Kruger’s groundbreaking wall work, “Untitled (Questions)” (1990/2018). This iconic red, white, and blue artwork (symbolizing the United States flag) asks nine questions, including “Who is beyond the law?” and “Who is silenced?” and “Who dies first?” The work questions the role of patriotism, systems of power and control, and civic engagement. I have been thinking about questions like these over the last two months, as we are nearing 70 days since COVID-19 triggered lockdowns began. This issue is titled “Cliffhanger”, and that term accurately describes where I, and I’m sure many others, feel during this present moment. At the time of this writing, the United States has 1.6M+ confirmed cases of COVID-19 and is quickly approaching 100,000 deaths. While I have experienced the simmering dread of waking up and contemplating what more could possibly go wrong on more days than I would like to admit, the lockdown has also provided me with the opportunity to really throw my energy and time into projects that I am passionate about and re-evaluate my future goals and plans.

GIRLS 6 is the second issue about the pandemic, featuring interviews from four powerful women who do not have an artistic practice but are crucial to the art world: two curators, one arts administrator, and one art collector. This issue is an exploration into what the role of the art world should be during moments of global crisis and how arts institutions can make a meaningful impact while taking the necessary precautions of social distancing.

I am intrigued by and at times appalled by the large, intricate dilemmas that often hinder the well being of museums and their employees. Museums are furloughing or firing hundreds of workers in anticipation of large revenue losses due to COVID-19. Employees such as art installers, visitor services, museum educators, retail, and events are most vulnerable to losing their jobs. While these “nonessential” employees (who are traditionally the lowest paid) struggle to navigate unemployment or the confusion of having their hours suddenly restored due to the Payment Protection Program, executives and senior staff are still consistently paid. For example, a museum directors’ annual salary can range from upwards of $200,000 to more than $3 million. Several museums across the country, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, MFA Boston, and Art Institute Chicago have paired large staffing cuts with tiered salary reductions in the 10-30% range for senior management. These empty gestures of financial solidarity, some of which are voluntary, do nothing to mitigate the devastating effects of job cuts on the livelihoods of those affected. This brings into question what type of message the museum is ultimately sending, and who does it ring strongest for? I hope readers will mediate on this as they read GIRLS 6 - and please remember to stay safe, stay healthy, and stay at home.

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PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES Dorothy Dávila is a museum professional based in San Francisco with over twenty years of experience managing people, projects, and programs. Over the course of her career she has cultivated a passion for art and exhibition making at institutions ranging from Harvard Art Museums to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), where she currently serves as Director of Program. At YBCA Dorothy is responsible for all facets of gallery operations, including curation, exhibition production, and education. During her tenure at YBCA, Dorothy has overseen numerous exhibitions and projects, such as Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, Bay Area Now 7 and 8, Alien She, and Tania Bruguera: Talking to Power / Hablándole al Poder.

Dorothy curated Tom Sachs: Space Program: Europa in

Photo by Ellen Shershow

2016 and co-curated Edgar Arceneaux with Lucía Sanromán in 2017. She holds a B.A. from Boston University.

Sarah Loyer is Associate Curator and Exhibitions Manager at The Broad in Los Angeles. At The Broad, Loyer curated Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983 (2019), organized by Tate Modern in London, and Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors (2017), organized by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Since joining The Broad as Curatorial Assistant in 2014, Loyer has worked on numerous exhibitions including The Broad’s inaugural installation (2015) and Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life (2016), and cocurated the exhibitions Creature (2016), Oracle (2017), and A Journey That Wasn’t (2018). Loyer earned a Masters in Public Art Studies from the

Photo by Paul Pescador

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University of Southern California and a B.A. in Media Studies and Cultural Studies from The New School.

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PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES Qianjin Montoya is currently Assistant Curator at The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Her practice includes curating, writing, and research, with a focus on institutional histories and narratives of women and people of color. In 2017, she co-curated the exhibition Black Light at the Wattis Institute in San Francisco that centered discussions of community-building and creative invention among black artists related to cultural institutions in the U.S. She has also curated exhibitions at One Grand Gallery (Portland, OR), and her curatorial research has been featured in exhibitions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco) and programming at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her writing and research has covered a 20-year regional history of art and exhibition making in the Bay Area, including interviews with Hank Willis Thomas, Stephanie Syjuco, Tony Labat, and Renny Pritikin, as well as the internal negotiations of American artist Faith Ringgold’s politicization and artmaking in the late 1960’s. She previously completed an Emerging Arts Professionals (SF/Bay Area) fellowship and is the current Americas Collection Research Fellow at Kadist in San Francisco. Her current

Photo by Kait Miller Photography

research engages the topics of race, education, representation, and artistic practice in order to reinforce space, access, and community as institutional forms of public engagement. Montoya holds a MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts and a BA in Art History from UC Berkeley.

V. Joy Simmons, MD is a semi-retired radiologist at Kaiser Permanente and an art collector. Her impressive collection of African-American art, which includes pieces from Kerry James Marshall, Lauren Halsey, and Alison Saar, fills her Los Angeles home. She is also a strong advocate for small galleries and arts engagement. She holds a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University and a MD from UCLA.

Photo by HRDWRKER

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SARAH LOYER GM: How and why did you become a curator? Could you also talk about how you got your current job?

SL: I have been interested in art all my life! During college, I spent almost every Friday at the Met museum in New York exploring its vast collection. I became interested in the way art is displayed, who has access to it, and the many publics that it serves -- as well as who is left out. I attended graduate school at USC, where I earned a Masters in Public Art Studies. Before joining the curatorial team at The Broad, I did several internships at arts organizations of different sizes and with various missions. I’ve been at The Broad since 2014, a year before the museum opened, and since then I have had many incredible professional opportunities, from helping to open a world-renowned institution to curating exhibitions like Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983 (2019).

GM: How do you think the COVID-19 pandemic will affect museum education and programming?

SL: While physical distancing measures mean museums will have to operate very differently, museums have a responsibility to their communities. Museums play an important role in communities, and in order to meet our communities’ needs during this unprecedented time, museums must engage in multidirectional conversations with the public. The outcome may be very different from one institution to another, based on the unique circumstances of the communities they serve. Education and programming are two important ways to reach wide audiences. At The Broad, our team is always thinking about how to reach new and varied publics through exhibitions, artwork on view, and diverse programming. During this period, we have continued this work through digital platforms and are now thinking about analog ways of reaching people in this time of social distancing. It is important now more than ever to make educational content accessible.

GM: How do you think the COVID-19 pandemic will affect curating?

SL: Temporarily, many curators at collecting museums will look at their collections instead of pursuing artwork loans. This will be an opportunity to explore the depths of collections and focus on the works in their care. Like all of us, artists are living through COVID-19 and their work that will emerge in the coming months and years will be vital to our understanding on the pandemic. Art is a mode of inquiry, and I’m certain that many curators and institutions will amplify the work and vision of artists through exhibitions and programming.

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SARAH LOYER GM: How has COVID-19 affected your work?

SL: The pandemic has heightened the reality of how little control we have as individuals; we’re used to being able to make plans in advance, but the virus has made it so no one knows when we will be able to return to public life, and in what form. For me, this has been the biggest challenge – that there are so many variables and scenarios to plan for and so much still unknown. On one hand, I’ve been trying to balance the short-term problem solving required during this uncertain time, and projects much further in the future on the other. At moments it seems easier to focus on projects that are years away.

GM: What is your opinion on the United States’ response to the pandemic?

SL: I see the pandemic as worsening the already stark inequities in our society. COVID-19 is no great equalizer; the most vulnerable people among us face the worst effects. People of color are disproportionately affected by the pandemic, both medically and economically. It is tragic and shameful that there are vast numbers of people in the United States who are suffering and dying because their basic human needs are not being met, such as access to food, water, shelter, and healthcare.

GM: What is a strong change you would like to see in the art world?

SL: The art field faces many of the same issues of inequity that affect our society at large, such as lack of diversity in the workforce, especially in decision-making roles. I would like to see the art world embrace and amplify new and varied voices – those of women, people of color, and others historically underrepresented in the field. This applies both to the artists and artwork supported by galleries and institutions, as well as the administrative Exterior view of The Broad, 2017. Photo by

staffs of these spaces.

Christopher Reynolds

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SARAH LOYER GM: What is your advice for those who are interested in curating?

SL: Honestly, I think I have the best job! But sometimes when people hear “curator” they think only about certain aspects of the job. Curating is a creative process and administrative one. It’s about telling stories, providing context, and finding the best way to make artworks accessible, but also about organizing, caring for objects, and a whole lot of planning for their display.

There are lots of different jobs in the art world, and my advice for people interested in curating is to think about what it is that they love about art and the strengths they can bring to the job. Some might find they thrive in an institutional setting, while others find working independently more fulfilling. I have friends and colleagues who have pursued writing, opening their own spaces, working in research institutions, museums, galleries, not for profit spaces, or in public art – there are lots of possibilities.

GM: How did it feel to win a 2020 Curatorial Award for Excellence?

SL: I am honored to have won an award from the Association of Art Museum Curators! Most of all, I am so proud of the exhibition Soul of a Nation, which celebrates the unique positions, both aesthetic and political, of over 60 Black artists working from 1963 to 1983. What made Soul of a Nation such a rich exhibition was its resolute focus on the art and the artists. For that, I am very thankful for the vision of my collaborators, originating curators Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley.

Installation view of "Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, 1963-83" at The Broad, 2019.

Photo by Pablo Enriquez

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DOROTHY DÁVILA GM: How and why did you become an arts administrator? Could you also talk about how you got your current job?

DD: My first semester at college, I got a work-study job entering data from catalogue cards at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which set me down this path of museum work. I was studying English at the time, but started to become more interested in art history as a result of seeing these tiny snapshots of information on index cards about objects in the collection. I started spending significant time in the galleries on my breaks, which led into a 23-year career in the museum world. I got into the field because I love works of art, but I stay in the field because I love working with artists to help them realize new work. Most of my career was spent at Harvard Art Museums as a collections registrar and institutional project manager. After getting more heavily involved with the administration side of the art world, I started to miss working with objects, and applied for a job as Registrar at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), an experimental, multidisciplinary arts center located in San Francisco. In the end YBCA called me and said, hey, we want you for this other job as Senior Exhibitions Manager. So I started managing the exhibitions production team. After a series of leadership transitions, I was eventually appointed to lead the visual arts program as Director of Visual Arts. Now, as Director of Program, my focus is more on the operational side of arts administration, working across all programmatic disciplines, not just the visual arts.

GM: How do you think the COVID-19 pandemic will affect museum education and curating?

DD: I think it’s already dramatically and irrevocably changed the museum landscape. At YBCA we were halfway through installing an exhibition called Come to Your Census: Who Counts in America? when we had to shut down and shift our focus to the virtual realm.

Instead of presenting the finished product in our galleries, we launched the exhibition as a digital platform where artist interviews, conversations, interactive activities, and live streaming programs constitute the visitor experience. After this pandemic, I expect all museums will need to shift to maintain this elevated level of digital engagement, in addition to whatever form of a physical experience we’ll be able to present in our new socially-distanced world. (Continued on next page)

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DOROTHY DÁVILA (Continued) At a time of remote learning, museum educators are more necessary than ever, and developing virtual tours that build on existing relationships with schools can offer some much-needed relief to parents and teachers looking for new ways to engage their children with fun, content-rich material. While some museums, like MoMA, have chosen to lay off their educators, many other museums are relying heavily on their education departments to maintain a critical bridge to the public and carry forward the institutional mission.

GM: How has COVID-19 personally affected your work?

DD: My work has shifted dramatically as a result of some wonderful initiatives spearheaded by YBCA that were brought about by COVID-19. Back in March I started working on a team led by YBCA, Zoo Labs, Black Joy Parade, and Always Win Together that created an artist relief fund aimed at helping our most vulnerable artists: POC, women, and LGBTQIA+ communities living on the edge. The fund, called Artists Now, was launched on April 9th, and disseminates micro-grants of $500 to eligible artists in the Bay Area, many of whom are facing food and housing insecurity. Within 36 hours, we received 700 applications and have funded 321 artists in need. It’s an absolutely amazing project to be apart of, and after reviewing many of the artist applications, I feel gratitude every day for what I have.

The other project I have been contributing to is called the Artist Power Center. Launched by YBCA on May 12th, this resource is a website and hotline for artists struggling to find their way through a maze of grant applications and various emergency relief funds. For this project I have been focusing on the community forum section of the site, collaborating with artists to help build out the tool with the burning issues of most importance to the artist community – everything from application anxiety, to educational tools, to mental and physical wellbeing. We are hoping this tool will become the go-to place for artists all over the country seeking to connect and share knowledge with each other.

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Installation view of "Bay Area Now 8" at YBCA, 2018. Photo by Charlie Villyard

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DOROTHY DÁVILA GM: What is your opinion on the United States’ response to the pandemic?

DD: Trump is a dangerous sociopath, willing to risk public health in the interests of jumpstarting the economy. His initial response to the pandemic was appalling, and his bombastic and willful ignorance continues to jeopardize American lives. Given that so many states have reopened prematurely – taking their cue from Trump – I am grateful to live in California, and more specifically, San Francisco, where our leadership is focused on flattening the curve.

GM: What is a strong change you would like to see in the art world?

DD: The Art + Museum Transparency project spread like wildfire in 2019, creating waves across the country with a simple invitation to arts workers to input their salaries, titles, and institutions into a massive spreadsheet. This surfaced some of the shocking inequities in the art world. More recently we see important work done by Indebted Cultural Workers at NYU, which compares the director’s salaries of various New York City cultural institutions to some of their lowest-paid employees. In one particular instance, senior leadership makes 53 times what an assistant might make at the same institution!

My hope for the future is that cultural institutions will continue to support unionization efforts led by their staff, and start to address some of these discrepancies through compensation analyses and salary adjustments. Every museum staffer deserves a living wage, particularly given that many museums are situated in expensive cities like New York or San Francisco. I was briefly apart of a union at Harvard many years ago, and our mantra was simple: “you can’t eat prestige.” I hope arts workers everywhere can leverage some of these recent tools to get the fair pay Installation view of "Tom Sachs: Space Program:

that they deserve.

Europa" at YBCA, 2016. Photo by Joshua White

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V. JOY SIMMONS, MD GM: How did you become an art collector?

VJS: Alonzo Davis, co-founder and co-owner of Brockman Gallery in LA, was my art teacher at Crenshaw High School. I started going to galleries and artist studios while I was attending Stanford, but it wasn’t until my freshman year that I went to New York and got introduced to art being in the home. My aunt was on the board for the Studio Museum in Harlem, and it was there that I saw more work by Black artists. I bought my first piece, a lithograph from Elizabeth Catlett, while in medical school, and I’ve been collecting for the last 45 years.

GM: How do you add to your collection?

VJS: I have to like the piece! I don’t traditionally collect a lot of pieces from one sole artist, but there are a few that I have several pieces from – Sadie Barnette, Gary Simmons, Todd Gray, and Mark Greenfield – but I usually restrict myself to 1-2 pieces per artist. Some highlights from my collection are monograph prints from Romare Beardman, Jacob Lawrence, and Cole Scott, a Deborah Roberts’ piece, and one of Hank Willis Thomas’ first sculptures.

GM: Do you feel that African-American art gets collected enough?

VJS: Yes, especially in the last 3-4 years. People who now have the capacity to use their disposable income to buy art are looking for what’s happening in the general landscape in ways that they weren’t before. The public really appreciates Black artists’ stories, which contain compelling and powerful ideas, and are more comfortable with representational art that looks at Black figures and Black bodies. I try to keep my eyes peeled for artists who are creating works that speak to new spaces and modes of representation.

Installation view of artwork in Simmons' home. Photo

by Installation Magazine

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V. JOY SIMMONS, MD GM: How do you think the COVID-19 pandemic will affect the art world?

VJS: The pandemic is definitely making some artists’ financial situation tight. Exhibitions that were on the horizon are either postponed or canceled all together, which is problematic for artists who were getting ready for a breakout moment. Spring season is usually really hot in Los Angeles; we were able to have Frieze in February, but Frieze New York went entirely online. Young, smaller galleries will hopefully be able to cover rent and their expenses until they are able to re-open. Art institutions are trying to gear up with online programming, which will ultimately change the landscape. It will be interesting to see what works artists produce – how does one look at the world politically and aesthetically when you’re confined for weeks on end? For example, photographer John C. Edmonds shot a series of men who are in hoodies and do-rags, but you can’t see their faces – this spoke to a specific time and space in the U.S. and emphasized how Black people have different experiences than anyone else.

GM: What is a strong change you would like to see in the art world?

VJS: Instagram provides a larger platform for artists to premiere their work and share their practice, which is great. I also think supporting small galleries is important. People have to understand the arts ecosystem – small galleries find emerging, underrepresented artists and show their work, then the artist moves up to a broader reach of the gallery through representation, and then they get swooped up by the big guys and show their work in museums. We have small art spaces all throughout LA, in mid-city, South Central, and Inglewood for example, where people can see art, support it, and enjoy it for free. I don’t want those spaces to dry up or for that dynamic to change because artists suddenly have to depend on being seen in big museums. My reminder to artists would be that there is a time and place to sell your work to a collector, but support and treasure these spaces that will organize your first show and bring in museums.

GM: What artists are you particularly enthralled with right now?

VJS: I really like the way that EJ Hill, a Los Angeles based artist, thinks. Genevieve Gaignard is really growing and expanding. Lauren Halsey presents a proud, Black aesthetic with an emphasis on South Central that is really exciting for me, having grown up in this area and really understanding how she interprets this space. Deborah Roberts is expanding her ideas with how Black children are perceived.

I bought Kenturah Davis’s work after she finished graduate studies at Yale, and she is now expanding her portraiture practice.

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V. JOY SIMMONS, MD GM: Do you believe the COVID-19 pandemic will negatively or positively affect collecting?

VJS: The Museum of African Diaspora in San Francisco just held an auction and pieces sold pretty briskly, so they did well on that. The 1% has big money, so they’re able to do whatever they want. Middle money and lowincome people may be more hesitant to purchase artwork because the work landscape has been altered in unprecedented ways. Even if someone has disposable income, should they make that kind of investment right now, or wait and see how things shake up? I believe that people will feel more comfortable purchasing

Installation view of artwork in Simmons' home. Photo

by A Guy + Girl Photography

art and donating to philanthropies and charities in 2021, because people are currently in shock and feeling much more conservative about their finances.

GM: What is your advice for someone who is interested in collecting art?

VJS: I tell people this all the time – go out and see art! Attend small galleries, go down the rabbit hole of Instagram, and keep your eyes peeled for artists who are being shown at bigger spaces such as CAAM and MOCA. Go to an art fair to get an idea of what you like and determine what fits your budget. Start off with buying photos, posters, and prints, thus working your way up until you can afford a painting. And don’t wait for an artist to be deemed as hot – follow emerging artists, see their work when it’s exhibited in your area, and invest in them. Even if you don’t think the work is valuable, take the risk – you don’t know the future!

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QIANJIN MONTOYA GM: How and why did you become a curator? Can you also talk about how you got your current job?

QM: I grew up in a bilingual, multi-racial family of artists, activists, and art educators that taught me the importance of education and accessibility, as well as the value of play and creativity. All were needed to live and thrive at whatever it was that we wanted to do. There was always an impetus to “be of service” to my community somehow. My father was an artist and poet who had participated in many important aspects of the Chicano and United Farmworker movements, and was an art professor at a local university. My mother was also an activist with a degree in health education; she often works with local schools to create health and wellness programs and bilingual resources for families in our community. They each provided models for a way of life, both in work and at home, that combined care, learning, and creativity, and those concepts have always remained important to me. While I never had an artistic practice of my own, I was always drawn to the ways creative and artistic environments generated space for a closer look at our individual methods and tools of perception of ourselves and the world around us.

Finding, creating, and supporting this kind of space was a driving force behind my non-linear path to curating. I often focused my academic and professional energies to projects that centered on people of color, specifically brown bodies in white institutions, and the effects of oppressive, socially constructed systems on those outside the dominant white experience.

After I completed graduate school in 2017, my main goal was not to have a job title with 'curator’ in it as much as it was to find work that allowed me to center these communities and support a space for dialogue, care, creativity, connection, and learning.

Installation view of "Black Light" at CCA Wattis Institute, 2017. Photo by Johnna Arnold

For a few years I did this as a researcher for specific projects at both YBCA and SF MOMA, but by the end of 2019 I was searching for a way to expand my view of how museum institutions regard these concepts internally. I took on the Assistant Curator role at the CJM at the beginning of 2020, and I was excited to be apart of an institution that engages history, culture, and community, and works daily to reconcile difficult but powerful historical narratives with critical and relevant contemporary artworks.

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QIANJIN MONTOYA GM: How do you think the COVID-19 pandemic will affect museum education and programming?

QM: We are all trying to gauge what the future holds for museum workers on the daily and long term. I’m currently navigating all of this, but what I have seen is an overall willingness to both simplify and innovate. The pandemic is giving us the opportunity to slough off any systems or methods that weren’t working for us so that we can get back to the basics while responding to this current movement. Maybe there’s a bigger argument to not charge museum entry after we return from SIP, give the public more online access to museum programming, or eliminate the need for physically packed exhibition openings and focus more on using museum resources to get programs to the public on their terms.

This kind of thinking is not outside of what a lot of museum workers were already trying to work out, but after COVID-19 the stakes seem a little higher and the delineations in the hierarchy of value for these kinds of changes are becoming clearer.

GM: How do you think the COVID-19 pandemic will affect curating?

QM: Curators will be thinking of both the value of the basics, while also looking to innovate and return with fresh ideas and methods of interaction for artists and the public.

In our current moment I am also thinking about how grounding and heavy this situation is on all of us as humans, and remembering to allow for the humanness to be present while brainstorming and gearing up for the future of the museum. We are all mourning the lives we had before this and that’s an inherently still, if not back-facing moment.

GM: How has COVID-19 affected your work?

QM: I had just began my tenure at the CJM and worked there for two months before we began the SIP, so my focus has been on connecting with my team and museum projects.

Further than reading up on past and future exhibitions because I’m new, I’m looking to familiarize myself not only with existing museum processes but also absorb the methods of change and adaptability that are sustaining us as a team in the curatorial department, larger exhibition crew, and as a museum.

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QIANJIN MONTOYA GM: What is your opinion on the United States’ response to the pandemic?

QM: I’ve seen a tremendous amount of generosity and grace in the ways so many people have come together to take care of each other during this time. Connection and support within and between industries has been really wonderful to see and reminds me that we are not only facing a pandemic together but are hoping to get to the other side of it together too. Unfortunately and not surprisingly, our government’s response has been a lot more of the same: swift action to support and protect the short and long term privileges of private interests (the wealthy) and basic, sweeping, dangerously out of touch and confusing solutions for the general well being of poor and working class citizens. Our current moment is unprecedented in so many ways, but the lack of care – if not outright attack and murder – of brown and Black bodies, and a disregard of immigrant and refugee health, is nothing new among so many other things. We’ve had to recalibrate the stakes to address these struggles during a pandemic, but the larger issues are features of the system, not bugs or glitches that appeared with the virus at the beginning of 2020.

GM: What is a strong change you would like to see in the art world?

QM: There has been a recent surge in resources with real-time data regarding discrepancies in pay and benefits for cultural institution workers, such as Art + Museum Salary Transparency in 2019 and more recently Indebted Cultural Workers. This transparency and subsequent conversations about how we got here and what it means moving forward are the kinds of steps towards change that I am hoping to continue.

GM: What is your advice for those who are interested in curating?

QM: Do the work you feel is important, whether or not anyone else is looking. In a world where privilege is so often weaponized, make sure to use your powers, whatever they are, for the greater good!

Exterior view of The Contemporary Jewish Museum, 2019. Photo by Alex Fradkin

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GIRLS MAGAZINE

CLIFFHANGER

MAY 2020

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 6