This is an open letter on behalf of community members who stand in solidarity with the Black women, femme, and gender non-conforming artists harmed by the 2022 Wisconsin Triennial Exhibition at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

We are here to put MMoCA on notice. We support the Triennial artists' repeated requests for accountability, transparency, and amends. MMoCA leadership are long overdue to take responsibility for repeated missteps, including and not limited to the damages done to artist Lilada Gee–a physical assault on March 9, 2022 and the defacement and theft of her artwork on June 24, 2022.

We object to the blatant lies of MMoCA’s leadership to cover up their failures:

1. Following the defacement of Gee’s work, MMoCA alleges that Executive Director Christina Brungardt’s actions were to deescalate the situation. But it is on record that she allowed the family to take the artwork out of the museum premises while she called Gee to ask for permission to give away the work, and that the family made it all the way to the Capitol Square before Brungardt tracked them down and retrieved Gee’s work.
2. As demonstrated on security footage, MMoCA left a gallery unattended for at least 20 minutes, during which a family defaced Gee's artwork. This disproves MMoCA’s recent claim in their press release, that there was only a “16-minute period during which hired gallery attendants were not in one part of the exhibit space.” There is demonstrable evidence that the work was unattended for longer than 16 minutes before MMoCA staff interfered.

If MMoCA cannot even get these documented facts correct, why should we believe anything else they tell us?

For months now, MMoCA has repeatedly failed to keep Black artists and their art safe, going as far as to deny any wrongdoing. In their own statement, the Executive Committee claims that while “MMoCA, like all museums, is grappling with historic institutional racism,” the defacement of Gee’s work “does not equate to disrespect for the Black artists or guest curator of the exhibit, nor does it point to institutional racism.” This raises the question, what definition of institutional racism best serves MMoCA’s agenda? To acknowledge that your industry is complicit in institutional racism and that you yourself are grappling with it, while insisting that harm to a Black woman artist at your institution does not count, is power protecting itself.

What's worse–MMoCA’s failures are of standard protocols to operate any exhibition space. It is confounding that a so-called state of the art museum would leave a gallery unattended, and then have no damage policy to enact in the aftermath. This speaks to either incompetence or deceit–either MMoCA leadership and staff are incompetent enough to run a $2.5 million museum operation and foundation without art and liability insurance–or that there is indeed a double standard of who receives the benefits of the most modest industry best practices. MMoCA’s lack of priority to protect the Triennial artists and inability to respond properly afterwards reinforces that even the basic industry standard wasn't something MMoCA was ever willing to invest in Black women, femme, and gender non-conforming artists.

MMoCA has been problematic for a long time and their trust with the Madison community and with artists has been strained for years. The 2022 Wisconsin Triennial could have been a chance to prove that the Museum is finally willing to listen and work on behalf of the community. It could have been a phenomenal showcase that centered Black women, femme, and gender non-conforming people as the cultural contributors and leaders that they are.

Instead, Black women, femme, and non-conforming people have once again been forced to bear the worst of everything, of tokenism, of double marginalization, of institutional abuse, and of the labor to bring the museum to justice.

We, the community, do not accept MMoCA’s tepid non-apology and aggressive response. Their press release comes months after the original offenses and only after these grievances reached national headlines. We do not accept the Museum's mistreatment of the Triennial artists, which reinforces harmful stereotypes of Black women as dishonest, dramatic, and over-reactive. The artists have provided comprehensive documentation of MMoCA's missteps, and for MMoCA to counteract that with unsubstantiated claims is a violence in and of itself.

We see MMoCA’s activation of regional press as an aggressive retaliation against the artists, and a direct rebuke of the artists’ open letter that MMoCA not retaliate against Triennial artists, guest curator, or Black staff members for participating in this protest. For MMoCA to couch a weak apology to Lilada Gee in a denial of wrongdoing is dismissive, violent, patronizing, and cowardly. Instead of modeling open, transparent communication, MMoCA’s leadership chose to send their statement as an email from the general Executive Committee email address, with no “leader,” least of all Christina Brungardt, willing to put their names on the statement. The Executive Committee’s attempt at their own anonymity indicates that they understand the effectiveness of collective action, if only for themselves. They don’t want to take accountability for this atrocity happening under their watch, nor do they want how they mishandled the situation to follow them in their careers.

In their press release, MMoCA’s Executive Committee insisted that they wanted this resolved privately. But if MMoCA had wished to gain the social currency of hosting an all Black women and femme Triennial in the public eye, then they must also be willing to look this public in the eye when they fail.

What these artists are doing is incredibly brave and deserves the community's unwavering solidarity. If we, the community, wish to see ourselves as allies, then we must take it upon ourselves to be brave, too. This is exactly what scares power–a populace that is willing to stand up to an institution, especially when they are not willing to face us.

We, the community, request again that MMoCA honor and follow through on the artists' open letter calling for accountability, transparency, and amends.

If MMoCA has any hope of recovering from this, Director Christina Brungardt needs to resign and the museum leadership needs a total overhaul. To MMoCA’s leadership, know that whatever the outcome at this point, this event is inevitably a part of your history and legacy. The shame already belongs to you, whether you acknowledge it or not.

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Email the Board Executive Committee and demand accountability: executivecommittee@mmoca.org

The current Board Officers, i.e. Executive Committee, are Dynee Sheafor (President), Vikki Enright (Vice-President), Colin Good (Vice-President), Juliet Page (Vice-President), Eric Plautz (Treasurer), and Jennifer Ridley Hanson (Secretary).

The current Board of Trustees also includes Dan Abrahamson, Erin Bemis, Marian Bolz, Gina Carter, Jim Escalante, Veronica Figueroa Velez, Larry Frank, Evan Gruzis, Chele Isaac, Valerie Kazamias, Nathan Kirley, Sarah Phillips, Hedi Rudd, Leslie Smith III, and Tina Virgil.