Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest by Laura Raicovich (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest by Laura Raicovich
• Terry Smith (bio)

culture strike: art and museums in an age of protest Laura Raicovich
Verso
https://www.versobooks.com/books/3777-culture-strike
224 pages; Print, $26.95

Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest begins with a vivid account of the circumstances that forced Laura Raicovich out of the directorship of the Queens Museum of Art, New York. When she took up the position in 2015 she inherited a not-for-profit art space that, under the previous director, Tom Finkelpearl, had pioneered responsiveness to local communities while remaining relevant to the wider region and to international visitors. This mission was not confined to an exhibition program known for landmarks such as Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s–1970s (1999). Community organizers were appointed to the museum's staff. They worked directly with groups throughout one of the most diverse boroughs in the city, serving the various needs of those speaking 138 languages and dialects. Finkelpearl went on to pursue similar policies as commissioner of the New York Department of Cultural Affairs from 2014 to 2019.

Seen more broadly, these initiatives were instances within the wave of reforms that had for decades been sweeping through all kinds of museums as they strove to reconcile their traditional top-down educational missions with the diversity of their massively increasing numbers of interested visitors. Progressive reforms met much resistance, most insidiously the defunding of culture by neoliberal governments at all levels. Yet what is now three generations of arts administrators have persisted with these reforms, working in concert with the mainly progressive arts practices that they so passionately support.

In the United States in late 2016 this commitment ran up against what Raicovich rightly calls the "Pandora's box of hate" unleashed by the Trump administration's rhetoric and policies. Its multimedia storm of populist nationalism targeted immigrants, foreigners, and the local elites that welcomed them. For the Queens Museum this meant several staff members, its community program, and eventually its director. Raicovich did not hesitate to [End Page 26] commit the museum to joining the art strike called for January 10, 2017, Inauguration Day, staging a teach-in in the atrium. She posted "a re-statement of values" asserting that the museum had "a deep commitment to freedom of expression, and intentionally supports and celebrates difference and multiplicity as fundamental to our collective liberation." Specifically, the Queens Museum "advocates for art as a tool for positive social change, critical thinking, discussion and debate, discovery and imagination, and to make visible multiple histories and realities," serves communities, respects diversity, and "uses our resources—human, financial, environmental, and beyond—to create greater equity, inclusiveness, and sustainability, both within our institution and in the wider world." The board of the museum unanimously adopted this statement and supported its director's actions to advance these values … until it didn't. The breaking point was her recommendation against a request from the Mission to Israel in the United Nations to hire the museum for an event reenacting the vote of 1947 when the General Assembly—which met in the building from 1946 to 1950—paved the way for recognition of the State of Israel in 1948. Recently elected vice president Mike Pence was billed as the keynote speaker. The board initially agreed that this was too obviously a politically partisan usage of the museum. A social media storm of accusations of anti-Semitism was unleashed, directed mostly at Raicovich. The board caved, and Pence gave a rousing policy speech prefiguring the move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Left dangling in this shitstorm, Raicovich found her position increasingly untenable and resigned in January 2018.

"Amid calls for diversity, equity and inclusion in our spaces of culture, there is no way around a confrontation with neutrality as a persistent ideology within the museum." Raicovich is aware that "neutrality" might seem an odd bête noir. But look what happened when a group of International Council of Museums members recently tried to expand the definition of a museum so as to manifest an active inclusiveness...