Right the wrong

Restore the Mattress Factory’s reputation

First, please allow me to apologize for my boomer generation. We did good things, demanding social justice and initiating social change. But we were young. We were impetuous. We sometimes threw the baby out with the bathwater.

My motivation for speaking publicly about what I’d regretted privately in recent years is the emergence of a new era of change and a concurrent affiliation of individuals and power structures similar to those that arose in the mid-last century.

It is understandable that aggrieved persons would speak with loud voice once opportunity is present, but unbridled enthusiasm can do harm.

Social change requires action, not reaction. It does not have a one-size-fits-all solution. That is revolution.

Exemplary of what I’m cautioning about is the current situation at the Mattress Factory art museum, which threatens the life of a globally admired Pittsburgh institution and the acknowledgment of contributions made by the two principals who built it.

A personnel complaint brought to the museum administration in 2018 was addressed following professional advice and with the continued oversight of the board. What should have been resolved amicably within a brief period became an unforeseen firestorm apparently fueled by the undiscerning winds of a prevailing social trend. Here’s where the baby was tossed. The complaint fit the profile of the then-strengthening #MeToo movement and, while it didn’t approach a Harvey Weinstein level of egregiousness, it was put into the same prosecutorial cauldron.

The board placed the museum coprincipal on paid leave (his partner had died earlier in 2018) while a lead complainant insisted on local media that nothing short of his dismissal would be satisfactory even though he was not the alleged perpetrator.

Threats of ostracism seem to have shamed or otherwise silenced comprehensive attempts at due process. Questions remain unanswered. (The museum board and appointed interim director refused Post-Gazette interview requests.)

Who is making decisions regarding the museum’s future and what is influencing that? Where is the input of Mayor Bill Peduto, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and others who have benefited from the museum’s positive international image and tourism draw? Where are the funders like RAD and the Heinz Endowments?

Are they all cowed by fear of negative #MeToo press? Did a consortium of the above decide the most expeditious way to move out of the media limelight was to eliminate the co-principal, Michael Olijnyk?

Worse, are they supportive of a board-led coup to own the museum following the death of its 88-year-old founder, Barbara Luderowski?

Pittsburgh wants to define itself as futuristic and progressive but seems not to understand the role having a bold arts culture plays in doing so.

Pittsburgh should own the Carnegie International, a farsighted exhibition founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1896, but has allowed lesser places to capitalize on it. Years ago, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust CEO Kevin McMahon spoke of his dream to make the city a cultural destination for the tri-state area, but that hasn’t materialized.

Now it’s about to eviscerate a nationally unique arts attraction and dishonor the persons who nurtured it over four decades.

It’s time to stop the bleeding. An unbiased panel should be named to re-examine proportionally outrageous actions taken to date and to outline a managed transition aided by the museum’s remaining visionary.

That would require extensive public apology, and recompense, for the damage done to his reputation, that of his late partner as well as the museum’s institutional legacy.

American playwright Arthur Miller’s masterwork “The Crucible” was set during the 17th-century Salem witch trials and written during the era of McCarthyism.

Noted New York theater critic Richard Watts Jr., comparing the two periods, wrote of the play: “The basic issues of emotional terrorism and the endless struggle between the rights of free men and mass efforts to destroy them under the guise of defending decency and right-mindedness [are] still with us.”

It’s unsettling that his words are as applicable more than a half-century later.

Pittsburgh, you’re on the wrong side of history. It’s time to right this wrong.