San Francisco Museum of Modern Art director Neal Benezra has repeatedly failed in his responsibility to uphold the stated values of the museum as a diverse and inclusive institution. What’s more, he has allowed racial discrimination, transphobia, and ableism to run rampant during his 17-year tenure. This cannot continue.

On May 30, 2020, a Black former SFMOMA staff member named Taylor Brandon was censored by the museum on social media for expressing her views on SFMOMA’s hollow and tone-deaf post during recent Black Lives Matter protests. All attempts by Neal Benezra to apologize have been equally tactless, hollow, and ignorant of the lived experiences of Black staff, as well as other people of color at his own museum. He proved so ill-equipped to engage in conversation with a group of Black artists that two other staff members had to take over correspondence in his place. As a part of their demands for accountability to Taylor and No Neutral Alliance, Neal has been asked to resign. He still has not done so.

On Thursday, July 9, 2020, in response to comments made by Senior Curator Gary Garrels during the July 7, 2020 all-staff meeting, Neal Benezra sent an all-staff message (the text which can be found below) in order to both distance himself from any accountability as Gary’s supervisor as well as omit the fact that the comments made by Gary were overtly racist. In his message, Neal acknowledges Gary's “inappropriate” and “upsetting” words are “out of sync” with progress towards a more equitable museum. Let us be clear: yes, his words were inappropriate and upsetting but moreover, they were blatantly and unquestionably racist. Neal did not name this fact.

Neal also did not apologize in his letter for enabling this kind of behavior in his leadership team in the first place. Instead, he asks the museum’s staff to join him in learning how to be anti-racist. Rather than take accountability as the director of the museum, he essentially throws said accountability onto the entire staff; many of whom have been telling museum leadership for years that racism is an ongoing problem at SFMOMA. Workers who attempted to offer guidance to the museum’s largely white leadership staff on issues of diversity and inclusion have been rebuffed at every turn, treated as naive, hysterical, or threatening and often forced to leave.  

Through Neal’s appeal, it is glaringly apparent that leadership saw Gary’s harm as defensible by the merit of his tenure and work at SFMOMA. It is proof that institutional leadership is complicit with a culture of white supremacy. There was no demand for an apology from Gary for his actions past or present, no directive about what steps would be taken to hold him accountable, and the response from leadership came over 48 hours after the event in which the racist incident occurred and amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist.

Gary recently resigned, but his stepping back should not preclude Neal from being held accountable for his unacceptable response, which is just one in a long series of unacceptable responses and non-responses. As Director of SFMOMA, Neal has effectively shielded Gary and others from the consequences of racist behavior, not just in this moment, but across the past seventeen years. It is only when such incidents become so public that leadership staff under Neal become deflections of his inability to govern effectively. How does it factor that External Relations Director Nan Keeton, Human Resources Director Marisa Robisch and also Senior Curator Gary Garrels all separated from the museum during this tumultuous time, and yet the museum’s director, the person who is directly in charge of these three people, is still able to hold the director’s seat?

Unfortunately, this affirms our fears: that leadership has no realistic, working plan to eradicate its own white supremacist culture. If the director can act with impunity, then there are no actionable consequences for offensive, oppressive behavior at the museum. It cannot be “transformed from the inside out,” in the words of the museum’s strategic plan. Time and time again, leadership with the power to implement immediate, institution-wide change at SFMOMA have proven incapable of making it at the most fundamental level. This same leadership has shown it is ignorant and oblivious of how to actually be anti-racist and not perpetuate oppression. We deserve better. 

Moreover, Neal Benezra perpetuates this cycle by hiring and promoting the same white leaders under his supervision who think, talk, and act like him.

Given his recent failures and his continued perpetuation of the cycle of white supremacy and violence towards BIPOC, we hold him as the chief executive officer for this institution responsible for not breaking the cycle, listening to his staff, and enacting change that would make the museum safe for BIPOC workers. 

He has failed in his duties to support his staff. He has failed in the stated aims to create a diverse and inclusive museum. He has failed to redress incidents that have caused trauma for many of the BIPOC staff at the museum. 

It’s time for him to go. 

Please join us in signing this petition demanding Neal to turn in his resignation — the only apology adequate to the level of damage he has done to the lives of workers of the institution he’s been entrusted to lead.

 

From: Neal Benezra

Thursday, July 9, 2020 6:56:29 PM

To: All Staff

Subject: Message from Janet Bishop and Neal Benezra

Dear Staff,

At our All Staff meeting on Tuesday, Gary Garrels was asked to defend past comments about collecting priorities that have recently appeared in the press and social media.

Throughout his tenure at SFMOMA, Gary has made enormous contributions toward the diversification of our collection. However, his previous comments and response to them on Tuesday were inappropriate and understandably upsetting. They are out of sync with the difficult and absolutely essential work that we are currently doing across the organization, and within the Curatorial Division, toward a more equitable museum. 

These challenging times offer an opportunity for each of us to educate ourselves about the importance of being actively anti-racist and to make sure that our words and choice points reflect that commitment. 

 

Neal and Janet