Museums add joint curatorship role with aim to boost diversity
A new joint art curatorship believed to be the first of its kind is coming to San Francisco.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Museum of the African Diaspora announced Tuesday, Feb. 28, the creation of assistant curator of the art of the African diaspora, a shared role that will be a fulltime, three-year position involved in projects at both institutions, including exhibitions and programming. The curator will also weigh in on acquisitions at SFMOMA, which its director Christopher Bedford sees as part of broader efforts to bring more diversity into the museum’s permanent holdings. MoAD does not have a permanent collection.
The new position will be funded by SFMOMA but filled jointly by both institutions. The museums hope to fill the role this spring.
“I don’t believe that there is another model out there in the field,” Bedford told The Chronicle of the partnership. “SFMOMA is a modern contemporary museum with a global focus, while MoAD is a culturally specific institution of a much smaller scale, with a much more circumscribed focus on the African diaspora.”
Bedford views those differences as opportunities for synergy and mutual collaboration, especially when it comes to further expanding SFMOMA’s representation of artists of the African diaspora, one of the priorities he’s announced since taking the museum’s directorship in June 2022.
“Black American artists and artists of the African diaspora are making some of the most excellent and relevant work in the world today,” added Bedford. “I want that to be among the leading edges of the work we do at SFMOMA, and I wanted an already invested partner in doing that. Who better than our incredibly close neighbor?”
The two museums are ad
jacent on Third Street in downtown San Francisco, but are vastly different organizations. The 88-year-old SFMOMA, with a $56.7 million annual budget and 170,000 square feet of exhibition space, is considered one of the most significant visual art institutions in the nation. The 18-year-old MoAD, a member of the prestigious Smithsonian Affiliate program, operates on a budget of $5.6 million and occupies 20,000 square feet in the St. Regis Hotel.
The two museums last partnered for the exhibition “Portraits and Other Likenesses” in 2015. The show was presented at MoAD while SFMOMA’s building was closed during its threeyear expansion project.
“We want to demonstrate our shared commitment between SFMOMA and MoAD to increasing the visibility of both under-recognized curators and artists,” said MoAD Executive Director Monetta White. “Partnerships like this can help connect the dots in the art world and in San Francisco.”
The intent of the job’s threeyear term is to allow early- and mid-career curators to gain experience and expertise in the role and then cycle out to other institutions, creating a pipeline of more diverse museum professionals.
“In the past in the museum world, you didn’t really see that many Black curators,” said White. “That was part of the (lack of ) diversity problem. They’re here, they’re talented, and we need to showcase them and give them these positions to be seen in.”
Bedford and White said that once the curator is chosen, that person will help design aspects of the job.
The two museum directors were initially introduced through Pamela Joyner, a wellknown collector and activist with a focus on art of the African diaspora. Joyner, also a trustee at SFMOMA, gifted 31 works by Black artists to SFMOMA’s permanent collection.
Joyner hopes that the new curator will put both institutions in touch with a new, younger generation of artists.
“I’ve worked with Chris a long time, and I’ve known Monetta a long time,” said Joyner. “They’re both ambitious and forward-thinking about the role that both museums can play in the city and beyond. They came up with this construct that I think is innovative and will be productive for both museums.”
White said that “bridging the gap” between the two museums had been a desire of hers since becoming director at MoAD in January 2020. Beyond the shared position, White also sees SFMOMA as a partner in increasing visitorship to MoAD, which was closed for 18 months due to the pandemic and underwent layoffs and staff restructuring due to financial considerations during that time. Since reopening to the public in October 2021, White has been able to increase the museum’s budget and to make several major staff hires, including Chief of Curatorial Affairs Key Jo Lee; chef in residence Jocelyn Jackson; and the museum’s first cultural critic in residence, Artel Great. White sees this new collaboration as another step in MoAD’s recovery.
“We’re financially stable, but obviously, it’s always still a hustle out there every year,” said White. “But because of our growth, because of our partnerships, collaborations and our programming and exhibitions, we are having more impact in our community. That’s really what this collaboration with SFMOMA comes down to.”
SFMOMA also had its share of difficulties since 2020. In May of that year the museum became embroiled in allegations of antiBlack bias following the removal of a comment from a former staff member on its Instagram page criticizing then-Director Neal Benezra as “profiting from Black pain.” A community backlash followed that led to several artists declining to participate in SFMOMA programming. The museum also announced programmatic and staff cuts that led to public protests.
In October, Bedford announced several major acquisitions and new initiatives, including a renewed commitment to expanding the diversity of the artists in the museum’s collection and a greater emphasis on making public spaces welcoming.
David Huffman, an Oakland artist and SFMOMA trustee whose work has been featured at both SFMOMA and MoAD, called the new shared curator role “an evolution of what both museums are trying to do socially.”
“MoAD has been like a lighthouse in the fog announcing, ‘We’re here, we’re making a stand,’ but it hasn’t always had the proper stage,” said Huffman. “With SFMOMA being such a robust institution with so many arms and places of influence, that gives MoAD a boost.”