Opinion
How can we empower arts leaders to reject funding from corrupt individuals in favor of donors who have proven themselves to be civic leaders?
Since the release of some of the Epstein files, journalists and members of the art public have sifted through them looking for associations with our beloved art world. We knew they were there because the halls of power are just a short distance away from modern and contemporary art. The super-rich finance their assets with loans, as Josh Spero notes in the Financial timesand prestige in grand gestures of art washing. It may feel voyeuristic to peek into the elite rooms that many of us are not normally privy to, but we have to realize that our perspective is skewed. We look through peepholes and often only see the reception areas of more complex power offices, where the real decision-making takes place. The culture that Jeffrey Epstein represents is deeply entrenched in the power structures of the art establishment that impose themselves on the rest of us and create a dynamic that exploits, degrades and turns us all into cynics.
Former museum director and department chair of the School of Visual Arts David Ross is one of the few art world figures to have suffered consequences from the resurfaced reports involving convicted pedophile, sex trafficker and rapist Jeffrey Epstein. His emails were disturbing but not surprising to those of us who have watched institutional leaders deploy their silver talents and curry favor with donors and administrators to facilitate loans, donations or favors. In this way, there is little unique about the higher echelons of power, even the soft variety. The leaders of smaller arts organizations may not be aware of those society rungs, but I suspect many of them—no, I know, because I’ve seen it happen as they rose through the ranks—would do the same if it meant cashing a big check to build a wing or make sure their staff got paid. It doesn’t excuse them, but it gives us some important context. We know that the leaders of small arts organizations have their own problems, as former Mellon Foundation Arts and Culture Program Director Emil J. Kang outlines in an excellent essay on the overworked sector that carries more than just their weight.
All of this begs the question: How can we empower arts leaders to reject funding from corrupt individuals in favor of donors who have proven themselves to be civic leaders we can be proud of? And no, I don’t buy the nonsense that “the system has always been this way,” as that breeds the kind of pessimism that is fertile ground for exploitation.
Since the 1980s, there has been a slow decline in the arts, as academia, arts organizations, artists, and all other aspects of our field join an increasingly wealthy cadre of donors who are not only separated from ordinary people, but also face no consequences for their nefarious actions. It is ironic that the increased public interest in art in the United States has led to a deterioration in the ethics of feeding the beast.
We must not forget that behind every art executive is a board that profoundly influences every decision and sometimes appoints the leaders, or forward figures, as false people. Is it any wonder today that artists, curators, traders and others cannot see the difference between working for dictators and working for institutions in democratic societies? If disgraced billionaire Leon Black – who paid Epstein the exorbitant sum of $158 million for tax and estate planning, something in which he had no formal training – is still the trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, can you blame their cynicism?
Who are we actually making art for? Sometimes I don’t think we think about that question enough. If the art you create, exhibit and circulate can only be supported by the people who drag us into the mud with them, is it worth it?
It’s a question we all have to answer for ourselves.
