Podcast appearances and mentions of Tanya S Autry

Diya Vij started her new job as Associate Curator of Creative Time just last fall, in the midst of the pandemic. She has since announced the first Creative Time Think Tank cohort, which includes La Tanya S. Autry, Caitlin Cherry, Sonia Guiñansaca, Namita Gupta Wiggers, and a number of other engaged voices of the art community. This new initiative invited people to submit proposals for an open call, drawing 200 individual or group applicants. The selected cohort will meet regularly for the next 10 months to reflect on the realities around us and imagine a way forward for the cultural sector.Vij has built a reputation over the years for her work at the Queens Museum, High Line, and in the Commissioner’s Unit of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, where she created the Public Artists in Residence program. She joins me to discuss this unusual think tank and what the collective hopes to accomplish.Music is Lorenzo Senni’s “Move in Silence (Only Speak When It’s Time to Say Checkmate)” from Warp Records.Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

This month on Live Culture I am in conversation with Curator/Activist La Tanya S. Autry, and Artist/Activist Amanda D. King. La Tanya is Gund Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, where the exhibit she curated -Temporary Spaces of Joy and Freedom -is now on view. Amanda is an Artist, Activist, Founder and Creative Director of the groundbreaking art and advocacy initiative Shooting Without Bullets. We discuss a recent upheaval at moCA, where an exhibition of drawings by noted artist Shaun Leonardo, depicting police violence, was cancelled after concern over the content was voiced. This resulted in an outcry from the artist, subsequent apologies to him from the museum and the director stepping down. Both Amanda and La Tanya were involved in raising objections to showing the work in the museum, along with Miss Samaria Rice, the mother of Tamir Rice, who was the subject of one of the drawings. Much has been written about the artist being censored, but there is more to it. This is a complex story which the two help untangle as we discuss institutionalized racism, community, and the impact of images. At the center of it all is the heartbreaking issue: what rights do family members of victims of violence have over the images of their loved ones? How do we sensitively navigate the line between public and private? And more broadly, what can we do about institutionalized racism in museums and the art world? Amanda D. King is a Cleveland-based artist, activist, and educator. Her civically engaged practice utilizes arts education, cultural production, and cultural organizing to spread progressive ideas and messages of social justice. Amanda is the Founder and Creative Director of Shooting Without Bullets, a for-impact organization utilizing cultural production, artist education and development, activism and advocacy to model an alternative arts ecosystem that accelerates movement Black and Brown youth and their communities need to thrive. Amanda holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History from Bryn Mawr College and a Juris Doctor Degree from Case Western Reserve University where she received the Martin Luther King Jr., Diane Ethics, and Dean’s Community Service Awards. More about Shooting Without Bullets here: http://www.shootingwithoutbullets.org/ As a cultural organizer in the visual arts, La Tanya S. Autry centers collective care in her decolonial, abolitionist curatorial praxis. In addition to co-creating The Art of Black Dissent, an interactive program that both promotes public discussion about the Black liberation struggle and engenders fighting antiblackness through the collective imagining of public art interventions, she co-produced #museumsarenotneutral, an initiative that exposes the fallacies of the neutrality claim and calls for an equity-based transformation of museums and the Social Justice and Museums Resource List, a crowd-sourced bibliography. La Tanya has curated exhibitions and organized programs at moCA Cleveland, Yale University Art Gallery, Artspace New Haven, and other institutions. Through her graduate studies at the University of Delaware, where she is completing her Ph.D. In Art History, La Tanya has developed expertise in the art of the United States, photography, and museums. Her dissertation The Crossroads of Commemoration: Lynching Landscapes in America, which analyzes how individuals and communities memorialize lynching violence in the built environment, concentrates on the interplay of race, representation, memory, and public space. More about the Temporary Spaces of Joy and Freedom exhibition: https://www.mocacleveland.org/exhibitions/temporary-spaces-joy-and-freedom More about The Art of Black Dissent: https://theartofblackdissent.wordpress.com/who-are-we/ More about Museums Are Not Neutral:https://artstuffmatters.wordpress.com/ More about The Social Justice & Museums Resource List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PyqPVslEPiq0Twnn4YYVXopk3q426J95nISRxvkQI_Q/edit

The phrase “Museums Are Not Neutral” is both a hashtag and the rallying words of a movement. This mantra has already changed the way museums around the world are visited, curated, and protested. Amplified by our guests Art Worker La Tanya S. Autry and Museum Educator Mike Murawski, the hashtag #MuseumsAreNotNeutral has been engaged more than a million times online by museum curators and educators, and by colleagues in related fields like libraries and archives. As Autry, who is employed at MOCA Cleveland as the Gund Curatorial Fellow, notes, “I love the expression because it's simple. It's right to the point. I'm actually wearing one of my Museums Are Not Neutral shorts right now and I'm really proud to wear. I do feel like it's in a way a type of armor. It's like this is going to protect me today when I go out there and it lets people know I'm about no nonsense. I'm wearing this message right across my heart and I really mean it.” Across America and overseas, Museums are Not Neutral is changing the way we think about museums, with tactics that build community and question the traditional role of the museum and museum educators. Murawski, who is an Independent museum Consultant based in Portland, adds, “Just like La Tanya said, as soon as I see someone with a T-shirt or now with the mug and they're posting online or I come across them at a gathering or event it just feels good because you're connected with at least thousands of people all over the world that are really dedicated to pushing and advocating for change and transformation across museums.”We speak to Autry and Murawski about the roots of their Museums Are Not Neutral campaign, how they collaborate and build across social media, and how museums can and should transform as spaces of connection.

On this month’s episode, Stephanie Cunningham shares her efforts to create alignment in her work after ten years of experience in the field. As a speaker, consultant, and educator, Stephanie has been a leading voice on race and equity in museums. After so many conversations, workshops and conferences discussing race and equity in museums, how far are we in achieving our goals? (Spoiler: we need to be reading a lot more!) How have the principles of museum education guided her journey through different roles in cultural institutions and museums? Plus, I ask her to demystify the process of consulting for the rest of us. Stephanie is an arts professional with over ten years in the field. She has written about her work for Curator: The Museum Journal and the Center for the Future of Museums as well as headlined talks about her endeavors at the American Alliance of Museums and Museum Next conferences. Her aptitude aligns with Museum Hue, an organization she cofounded that fosters the social cohesion well-being, and economic impact through the arts for people of color. Reading:  Social Justice & Museums Resource List initiated by La Tanya S. Autry Should I use the adjective "diverse"? by Alex Kapitan   For questions or feedback contact Paula Santos at culturaconscious@gmail.com.