Four major funders – the Alice L. Walton Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and Pilot House Philanthropy – today lifted the veil on a new program aimed at increasing racial equity in senior positions in the museums across the United States. The new Leadership in Art Museums (LAM) initiative will receive $11 million in funding over the next five years from the four founding organizations. Among the roles LAM hopes to foster diversity are those of curator, curator, collections manager, community engagement staff and educator.
The creation of LAM was inspired in part by the Diversifying Art Museum Leadership (DAMLI) project and the fledgling Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, as well as a number of studies by the Mellon Foundation. The foundation’s most recent art museum staff demographic survey found that Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Arab, Asian, Pacific Islander and other people of color were grossly underrepresented in institutional leadership positions, with only 20% of those in museum leadership positions and 2% of curatorial staff identifying as non-white. (Hiring trends at the upper levels showed encouraging, albeit slow, progress in 2021 and 2022.) By increasing high-level opportunities for people of color, LAM hopes to eventually diversify museum collections. A 2019 survey found that only 1.2% of works in all major American arts institutions were created by black artists, 2.8% by Hispanic and Latino artists, and 9% by Asian artists.
“Ultimately, the future of museums depends on their ability to remain relevant and serve their communities,” Alice Walton, founder of her eponymous organization, said in a statement. “LAM museums represent a variety of regions across the United States and help ensure that we increase access to museum roles in a way that includes communities of color, regardless of where the institution artistic is based. With this dedicated group of funding partners, we are united in our commitment to achieving lasting impact.
