Cleveland Museum of Art unveils first 'Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Plan'

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Helen Forbes Fields, a trustee at the Cleveland Museum of Art, said that she recently saw a guard turn away a young black man when he pushed open the North Lobby doors as the museum was about to close.

Forbes Fields, who is black, said she feared that the abrupt tone in the guard's voice might have made the visitor feel unwanted. So she told the young man he would be welcome to come back the next day at 10 a.m.

"I just wanted him to know that this is a place that's open for him and yes, the doors are closed now, but they certainly will be open for him the next day and the day after," she said, adding, "I felt I needed to say that at that moment."

Forbes Fields described the incident as one example of why the museum needs the new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Plan that it is formally announcing today.

"We've got work to do," she said.

Two years in the making, the plan outlines broad changes in how the museum will hire and train employees, buy goods and services from vendors, collect and exhibit art, and educate students.

The goal is to eliminate barriers for historically underrepresented groups in every aspect of the museum's operations. The plan dovetails with the museum's 2017 strategic plan, designed to help the institution make the most of the $320 million expansion and renovation completed in 2013.

"I'm very proud of this plan," said museum Director William Griswold, who joined the museum in 2014. "It provides clear steps to achieve a long-term goal of an audience that mirrors the community we serve, and more closely mirrors our population."

Responding to the episode described by Forbes Fields, Griswold said: "It is precisely to address incidents of that type that a plan is essential and in order."

American art museums, including Cleveland's are grappling with how to address the reality that while they occupy cities with increasingly diverse populations, their audiences, boards and staffs historically have been largely white.

"This is the defining issue of our field at the moment,'' said Cyra Levenson, deputy director and head of public and academic engagement at the Cleveland museum, who led the staff committee that helped trustees devise the diversity plan.

A national survey completed by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2015 found that "Although 28 percent of museum staffs are from minority backgrounds, the great majority of these workers are concentrated in security, facilities, finance, and human resources jobs.

"Among museum curators, conservators, educators and leaders, only 4 percent are African American and 3 percent Hispanic," the survey said.

At the Cleveland museum, roughly 26 percent of 566 employees are persons of color, up from 22 percent last year, Griswold said. Of the total, 62 percent are female.

About 13 percent of the museum's 163-person professional staff, which includes, curators, educators, librarians, managers and others, are persons of color.

In 2017, the museum hired its first black curator, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, a native of Nigeria, to manage the museum's African collection.

On the museum's 36-member board, four - or 11 percent - are persons of color.

In every category, Griswold said, he expects greater diversity will be achieved.

Under its new plan, the Cleveland museum defines diversity as including "race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, socioeconomic status, educational status, marital status, language, age, and mental or physical ability."

Griswold said the plan would be shared on the museum's website.

"This is a document I would love for everyone to read. I welcome people's critique of the plan as well. No plan is perfect and this one will continue to evolve."

The plan includes 16 actions the museum will take over the next two years. They include marketing the institution to new audiences, choosing vendors that represent the diversity of the community, requiring a diverse pool of candidates for every job opening, initiating tours in Spanish, and launching a new community arts center in the Villa Hispana area on Cleveland's near West Side.

A major thrust of the plan is to create educational programs for high school, college and graduate students from underrepresented communities that provide exposure and encouragement to pursue of careers in art museums.

Another goal is to build new audiences so "visitorship increasingly reflects the demographics of the Cleveland-Elyria Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Cuyahoga County Statistical Area."

The Cleveland museum offers free general admission, but even so, Griswold said, "neither our staff nor our visitors represent the diversity either of our collection or of the community we serve."

The metro region is 20 percent black and the county is 30.5 percent black according to the Census.

The museum says that about 69 percent of its annual attendance of 600,000-plus comes from the Cleveland statistical area. Of that number, about a quarter are persons of color, Griswold said.

Levenson said data on the museum's progress toward goals in the new plan will be publicly shared.

Forbes Fields, for her part, cautioned against quotas.

"You get into a dangerous trap if you say you have to look at a certain number," she said.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum have been criticized recently over issues related to diversity in hiring. The Cleveland museum hasn't aroused such visible ire, but discontent has simmered for years.

Cavana Faithwalker, a community empowerment consultant in Huntsville, AL, who worked at the museum as a specialist in community engagement between 1990 and 2010, said he was surprised at the time "about how many in the black intelligentsia felt that the museum was the enemy. It blew me away."

Faithwalker, who is black, said he also confronted internal obstacles when he tried to broaden the museum's audiences and programs. He welcomed the museum's new plan, but said that the test would be whether it sticks as long-term policy.

"So often stuff dies with the person and the position and all those efforts go with it," he said.

Forbes Fields, the daughter of former City Council president George Forbes and executive vice president and general counsel of the United Way in Cleveland, said the museum's plan has been a long time in coming.

"I jokingly say we have a diversity plan after 102 years in existence," she said, referencing the museum's opening in 1916.

Forbes Fields has been the longstanding chair of the African-American Advisory Committee and now also chairs the Nominating and Governance Committee.

Coming up with a diversity plan was not as high a priority earlier in the 2000s as it is now, she said. High turnover in museum leadership between 2000 and 2014 prevented a sustained focus, she said, but Griswold, whose contract runs through 2024, has shown strong interest.

"I would say he's been a wonderful partner,'' she said.

Griswold said that many of the 16 action steps outlined in the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Plan have been underway, even before his tenure began.

The frequency of shows on African-American artists increased sharply in 2013. Since then, the museum has exhibited works by artists including William H. Johnson, Carrie Mae Weems, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Wadsworth and Jae Jarrell, and Kerry James Marshall.

Multiple major additions to the collection since 2006 have included works by Edmonia Lewis, Augusta Savage, Jacob Lawrence, Charles Sallee, Hughie Lee-Smith, Norman Lewis, Emma Amos, and Wadsworth Jarrell.

Last November, the museum announced it had joined the national Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative, funded by the Ford and Walton Family Foundations with local help the Cleveland Foundation.

As part of that program, the museum this summer hosted six graduate students for a two-week intensive program that included conversations on creative thinking with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tyehimba Jess.

Jess, who spoke by phone Thursday from New York, said he was encouraged by the museum's current outreach.

"What they're doing is investing in a dialogue rather than a monologue," he said. "We're at a juncture in our history where monuments and traditions and the institutions that we have traditionally considered cornerstones are all being questioned in radical and inventive ways."

Forbes Fields, for her part, said she is feeling encouraged.

"From the late 90s to now, there's huge progress that's been made," she said. "I'm very happy about it."

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