INDIANAPOLIS - The Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields has apologized for a job listing seeking a new director who would maintain the museum’s “traditional, core, white art audience.”The wording was a bullet point in a six-page job description that also said the museum was working to attract a more diverse audience. However, museum officials removed the word “white” over the weekend following outrage, including from guest curators of an exhibit on a Black Lives Matter mural in Indianapolis. The museum’s director and chief executive, Charles Venable, said the decision to use “white” had been intentional to show the museum wouldn’t abandon its existing audience as it works for more diversity. She said the wording illustrates an incorrect sentiment that raising up art from African or Indigenous artists would somehow exclude white people and that words like “traditional” and “core” were also stand-ins for white. “You can’t do both.”The position description, first posted in January on a non-profit search firm with listings from around the world, now reads “traditional core art audience.”Newfields is the Indianapolis museum’s 152-acre campus which includes gardens and an art and nature park.

Source: thestar February 14, 2021 18:56 UTC