curator says museum’s white supremacy silenced her

Invited to the Guggenheim Museum as a guest curator, Chaedria LaBouvier organized the exhibition and edited the catalog for “Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: The Untold Story,” which closed last week after a five-month run and rave reviews. The first Black woman to curate a solo exhibition at the museum, LaBouvier’s involvement in the show was historic and highly-anticipated. At the centerpiece of the exhibit was the Jean-Michel Basquiat piece, “Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart),” which the artist painted on a wall at Keith Haring’s studio following Stewart’s brutal 1983 murder by New York City Police. (Haring saved the painting, cutting it out of the studio wall.)  With social justice, identity, and activism setting the tone, the exhibit supplemented Basquiat’s work with additional pieces that raised similar themes, as well as archival materials about Stewart’s death, which became a major, contentious tabloid story in the city.

One of the great successes of LaBouvier’s exhibit was how it used a museum show to re-examine a historical incident originally told through a white supremacist narrative. Which is why the Guggenheim’s decision not to more deeply engage LaBouvier during the exhibit’s run — and especially, not invite her to speak at the exhibition’s closing panel on the weekend of November 5th — seemed so contrary to what “Basquiat’s ‘Defacement'” was about. Refusing to be shut out of a conversation she presented, LaBouvier confronted the panel, organized by the museum’s chief curator, Nancy Spector, and accused the group of silencing her, while profiting off of her work.

“You have a panel that is hoisted on that intellectual labor, that intellectual credibility, on the penultimate day of the exhibition and say that it’s not about the Basquiat show?” LaBouvier said.

It went down at the Guggenheim! @chaedria is the first Black curator to exhibit with the institution with her show Basquiat: Defacement The Untold Story. They left her off the panel and….. pic.twitter.com/UjM5NlpBRz

— bad news women (@badnewswomen) November 6, 2019

The video cut off (Twitter’s limit) but here’s the rest of what I said about institutional violence and to Nancy Spector who organized the panel for “weaponizing bodies of color to do your filth.” https://t.co/XQX6sl788B

— No Quarter Will Be Given (@chaedria) November 6, 2019

And this is how Elizabeth Duggal, president of the Guggenheim responded:

Elizabeth Duggal, President of The Guggenheim Museum response pic.twitter.com/hxYPftniGF

— bad news women (@badnewswomen) November 6, 2019

This was not the first time that LaBouvier spoke out about her alleged maltreatment by the museum while working on “Basquiat’s ‘Defacement.'” She had previously cited what are, at the very least, unprofessional actions that the museum used to exclude her in the exhibition’s overall voice, denying LaBouvier the full breadth of what is customary for any curator at a prominent museum.

I hope that this conversation and action shifts the pendulum twds compassion and justice. The art world needs more of those things and more of those ppl.

That said, I cannot in fair faith suggest anyone of color join most museum ranks. https://t.co/NhM6oau6fz

— No Quarter Will Be Given (@chaedria) November 4, 2019

I believe in institutions that work. I (sometimes) believe in institutions that offer remorseful, corrective, compassionate and moral corrections to their abuses of power of past.

The show is a scholastic success, but is an institutional failure in the Guggenheim’s history.

— No Quarter Will Be Given (@chaedria) November 4, 2019

I wanted badly for this show to be a success in every way, but it was not to be.

What parts were a success were in spite of the Guggenheim, not because of it. And I can say that having built and funded the foundation before it got to them.

— No Quarter Will Be Given (@chaedria) November 4, 2019

This wasn’t the first time the Guggenheim has disrespected me whole benefitting from my labor. I said nothing about a lot.

The brick that broke the camel’s back was the audacity to host a panel more or less hoisted on the intellectual currency of my work.

Not on my watch.

— No Quarter Will Be Given (@chaedria) November 6, 2019

Please ask why at a publicly funded museum these things have happened:

The panel
Being barred from de-installation
Digital products such as digital guide x Spotify playlist created w/o my knowledge/input
Not being asked to give high profile private tours, as curators do. https://t.co/QQ3V5g1iVT

— No Quarter Will Be Given (@chaedria) November 1, 2019

On Instagram, I said that the handling of me x my show as the 1st Black curator of a show in their 80 yr history will go down as one of the most shameful chapters of Guggenheim museum history, like Hans Haacke. https://t.co/9rOTdT7b0v https://t.co/Rl81Pbo5ha

— No Quarter Will Be Given (@chaedria) November 8, 2019

In response to LaBouvier’s characterization of her experience working with the museum, a Guggenheim spokesperson said, “All staff and guest curators follow standard guidelines for every exhibition we present; we disagree with Ms. LaBouvier’s claims that she was treated differently.”