A 2015 study by the Mellon Foundation revealed that there was a scarcity of minorities employed in museums.  That report led to the Ford Foundation and Walton Family Foundation investing $3 million each over three years in the Diversifying Museum Leadership program that encourages museum staffs to better reflect the country’s increasingly minority population.

Despite the fact that 38 percent of Americans describes themselves as Latino, Black, Asian and multi-racial, the Mellon Study reported that minorities compose only 16 percent of art museum staff.  The program aims to train minority candidates through a series of fellowships and internships.  The initiatives will affect “curatorial and programmatic decision-making in the museums, as well as managerial choice and lead to long-term benefits for the participating museums,” said the program’s background material.

In fact, the grants support the creation of 11 new professional positions, provide internships for 360 college adults, and advance the careers of 33 graduate-level and post-graduate museum professionals.  For example, Minneapolis Institute of Art is hiring a full-time Diversity & Inclusion Manager and the Hood Museum of Art a full-time associate curator.   Some of the museums are financing these new positions from proceeds of the grant money.

The Diversifying Museum Leadership Program’s goal is by 2025, 30 percent of mid-and senior level museum positions will be filled by minority candidates.

In fact, 20 museums will receive funding over the three-year period with grants ranging from $81,000 to $555,000. For example, the Newark Museum in Newark, N.J., will have six undergraduates starting in June 2018 through June 2021.  Other museums participating include the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Art Institute in Chicago and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

The Newark Museum

Deborah Kasindorf, the co-director of the Newark Museum, said it was eager to participate in Diversifying Museum Leadership for several reasons.  “Given who we are and where the museum is located, and who our audience is, and our African American collection, our core belief is diversity,” she said.

Why so few minorities are employed in museums is a very complex and thorny issue.  But Kasindorf said one factor is working in nonprofits often doesn’t pay as well as corporate jobs.  Hence, museums attract employees for whom “compensation isn’t the driving decision for choosing their careers.  That is one reason why it is so important to offer paid internships and to increase the awareness that you can make a living, working in the arts,” she said.

The Newark Museum obtained an $180,000 grant from Diversifying Museum Leadership.   Primarily those funds will support internships for six participating students and also funds staff involvement in the program.  Moreover, interns in the program will participate during the summer of their second year in another museum internship at either Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Ark., the Princeton Art Museum or Brooklyn Historical Society.  That will broaden their perspective, enabling them to experience how two museums operate.

In determining the criteria of which students to accept, Kasindorf said it was seeking participants who express a strong interest in the museum field as a career path.  Yet she noted that students can be interested in museum leadership, finance, marketing or becoming a museum CFO.

Rutgers University And Beyond

Students could be accepted from colleges outside of New Jersey, though she noted that the museum has a strong relationship with Rutgers University.  And though there are no ethnic quotas in the program, Kasindorf noted that “given the colleges we’re using as feeder colleges or in our pipelines, we’d expect there will be a good representation of Latino students.”

Interns are immersed in nearly every aspect of how the Newark Museum operates including curatorial development, fund raising, exhibition design and marketing.  Each intern interacts with museum departmental leaders and shadows each of them.

Upon interns completing the program, Kasindorf expects that the graduates will “continue the path toward the museum field with graduate scholarship or investigating jobs or careers in the museum field.”  She said it’s difficult to project whether there will be openings at the Newark Museum in 2021 and whether some former interns could be hired there but noted that “they’d be a strong candidate, given their three-year internship that includes experience with a sister organization.”   

Overall, the interns will “improve their project management, communication skills, strategic thinking, presenting a case and prioritizing skills,” she said.

The Ford Foundation

Margaret Morton, the director of the Creative and Free Expression program at the Ford Foundation, noted that it’s spearheading the program based on its “belief that every sector benefits from having a range of diverse and varied perspectives.  The lack of diversity in art museum leadership undermines the important role that these institutions play in our communities.”

Moreover, Morton pointed out that the lack of minority leadership affected every aspect of what a museum does including “exhibitions, collections, programs, education and audience engagement.  As a result, museums are not connecting to the full range of people in the communities.”  Hence, people in the communities “don’t see themselves reflected in the museum, its personnel, programming and role in the community,” she observed.

Diversifying Museum Leadership’s goal is to fuel the pipeline and create skilled museum talent.  “That’s why,” Morton said, “this initiative is looking at multiple levels of museum leadership including internships, fellowships, university programs and mentorships and training for professionals who are already working in the sector.”

More than 800 museums were sent requests for proposals, which resulted in 83 letters of intent.  Museums selected for the program reflect a wide geographic base and include five each from each major geographic area: the Northeast, the South, the Midwest and the West.  It also encompasses six small museums with budgets under $5 million, seven mid-sized museums with budgets from $5 million to $15 million and seven large museums with budgets greater than $15 million.

One overriding goal of the program is to enhance museums’ involvement in their communities. “Communities that have robust art museums that are actively and effectively engaging in the full spectrum of local residents in their activities are better civic leaders and better connected to the lives of all residents,” Morton concluded. •