One of the great qualities of art is that it can transcend social, political, and ethnic divisions in appealing to the aesthetic and concepts of beauty or meaning. While the backgrounds and periods of artists often inform the viewing of their work, it is the art not the artist that it is focus most people. The Baltimore Museum of Art, however, cannot separate the race of the artist from the art. It is selling masterpieces by white painters to buy art of non-white artists in a move that its own director, Christopher Bedford calls “an unusual and radical act to take.” This will include work by by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and other masterpieces because the artists are white.
Bedford calls this a “transformative” moment that reflects the fact that “the most important artists working today, in my view, are black Americans.”
Bedford came on board in 2016 as the 10th director at the museum — replacing a director who led the museum for 17 years.
“Deaccessioning” is not a new concept but the decision to unload major works on the basis of race is indeed a radical departure from past practices. Rather than focus on the art, Bedford sees his function as matching the race of artists to the racial preferences and makeup of the population: “I don’t think it’s reasonable or appropriate for a museum like the BMA to speak to a city that is 64 percent black unless we reflect our constituents.” Does that mean that museums in cities with equal percentages of whites can now reject art based on the non-White identity of the artists?
I hardly view that effort as redeeming but rather regressive to a time when artists were judged not by their art but their race. There was a time when black artists found themselves shut out from galleries or museums. That changed due to the transcendence of artistic value and meaning.
