Volunteers fired

[George K]

The Art Institute of Chicago, best museum in the world, is firing all of its volunteer docents:

Editorial: Shame on the Art Institute

Anyone with some tread on their tires who’s been fired by email can recognize the protocol. The writer blathers on about your years of dedication to your job, their gratitude for all you have done for all this time, and then hits you with some self-justifying jargon: the need to “update systems,” maybe, or the need to “rebuild” or “better serve” someone or some group. These days, perhaps even in the name of “equity” or “inclusion.”

By then you know what’s coming after all the disingenuous paragraphs: You’re canned, most likely in favor of a newer model.

Just such a weaselly letter was sent out Sept. 3 by Veronica Stein, the Woman’s Board executive director of learning and engagement at the Art Institute of Chicago. The recipients were the museum’s 150 or so volunteer docents, a beloved mainstay of the venerable cultural institution for decades and the main providers of fine, learned tours to Chicagoans, tourists, students from Chicago Public Schools and myriad other visitors to our great museum.

Once you cut through the blather, the letter basically said the museum had looked critically at its corps of docents, a group dominated by mostly (but not entirely) white, retired women with some time to spare, and found them wanting as a demographic.

No matter that the docents had typically trained for years, if not decades, on how to describe the Art Institute’s collection, or worked hard on adjusting to the trendy new ways (”Art and Activism”) of describing the work to be found there, or put in hour after hour in academic study of their fields.

Thus the museum had decided to can the whole lot of them, replacing the group with a small number of paid educators working longer hours.
Don’t forget to pick up your things, it said, among other pleasantries. Feel free to meet on your own, it allowed, although we won’t be able to support you. And would you like a free membership? Initially, the museum even put an expiration date on that, before backing down after the docents expressed their deep sadness at such shabby treatment after all their years of service.

And, let’s be honest, all their donations of time and money. Look at Stein’s own title. She is the Woman’s Board executive director of learning and engagement. Volunteers pay her freight.
Frankly, the museum would certainly have had a tough lawsuit on its hands for age and race discrimination (there were laws against that, last time we checked) were it not for one thing: Everyone being nixed was a volunteer. And, as at least one docent found out after contacting the AARP, volunteers are not covered by federal employment laws. We’ll wager museum lawyers had pointed that out.

Volunteers are out of fashion in progressive circles, where they tend to be dismissed as rich white people with time on their hands, outmoded ways of thinking and walking impediments to equity and inclusion. Meaningful change, it is often said, now demands they be replaced with paid employees. In this case, the clear implication is that such employees will be more amenable to how some of the lefty cultural apparatchiks at this great museum now insist their works be described.

This is an absurdly reductive view of volunteering. The museum docents came from all walks of life and by no means were all of them either white or wealthy. Most of them long have seen themselves as liberals and progressive thinkers, arts lovers who have found their calling later in life and are fully aware of some of the things that have to change in museums. They just thought it would not have to be them.

Many of them likely have stayed up late at night getting themselves up to speed on what the museum expects from them now with its Art and Activism tours. They couldn’t change what they looked like, of course, nor could they knock years off their lives, nor could they reduce the size of their bank accounts, typically the result of careful saving to allow for a fulfilling retirement. Plenty of them took the CTA to the museum.

We think this was a callous move in a cruel time in America. We get the appeal of ripping off the Band-Aid, but the resultant optics, not to mention the human cost of supporters feeling devalued, clearly was not fully considered.

Why not invest some time in recruiting new, diverse docents? Why not grow the corps in such a way that it’s refreshed? Why not help docents who need help with expenses or child care? Why not have a hybrid model, at least until the current docents exit?

And, above all, instead of trashing volunteerism as inherently elitist, why not avow and attest to its ongoing value as a vital part of necessary diversification and cultural change?

We know hardworking Chicagoans of all races who toil for a living for 40 hours a week, or more, and still spend nights and weekends in service to their communities and their city. Many of them say they get far more out of their service than those they are serving. Exactly.

Furthermore, retirees can describe works of art with the benefit of experience: They are more likely to know pain, loss and the chaos of change. All themes in the museum’s collections; all insights valuable to students. We like our tour guides to know something of life.

We hear the docents, hardly a radical group of agitators, have requested a meeting with the president of the Art Institute, James Rondeau, who should at least have signed the initial letter himself. This was a vulnerable group in today’s progressive power structure and he didn’t protect them or what they love to do.

He should meet with them, apologize and find some kind of compromise that does not involve the spectacle of long-serving devotees of a great museum left to feel like they’ve been put out with the gift-store trash.

[Horace]

I would assume the majority of those volunteers are card carrying progressives. Enjoy your progress.

[George K]

The docents respond:

https://www.chicagonow.com/dennis-byrnes-barbershop/2021/09/art-institute-of-chicago-fires-docents-because-they-are-too-many-whites-in-their-ranks/

[Mik]

I think the response gives too much credence to the goals of the new director. She should be fired immediately and those who normally contribute to this great facility should discontinue that financial support immediately.

You can't create harmony by attacking the in group. You only start a war.

[Doctor Phibes]

Imagine for a moment if you will what would happen if a white woman noticed that all her volunteers were black, and fired them due to a lack of diversity in the workforce.

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[mark]

Why are so many people in positions of power, so freaking stupid?

[taiwan_girl]

Goofy.

[George K]

@taiwan_girl said in Volunteers fired:

Goofy.

Diverse!

[Axtremus]

Forget the Art institute. Redeploy the resources towards reducing crime, reducing homelessness, improving basic services, etc. And by "resources," I also include the volunteers. Art museum is luxury. Chicago (and many big cities) needs the basics more.

[Jolly]

@axtremus said in Volunteers fired:

Forget the Art institute. Redeploy the resources towards reducing crime, reducing homelessness, improving basic services, etc. And by "resources," I also include the volunteers. Art museum is luxury. Chicago (and many big cities) needs the basics more.

Absolutely.

Arm the old ladies...

[kluurs]

It seems like a short-sighted strategy as those folks and others like them are a source of planned giving. Obviously, it is also a bad PR move. "Engagement" has become one of the new buzzwords for organizations - but many organizations screw up the concept.

[Aqua Letifer]

@axtremus said in Volunteers fired:

Art museum is luxury.

So is English, it appears.

[Jolly]

Art defines the better aspects of society. Museums, art galleries and concert halls should be encouraged, and many deserve public support and should be free to all.

Carnegie knew that free libraries could nurture the public's mind. Free art can nurture the public's soul.

[Mik]

@jolly said in Volunteers fired:

Art defines the better aspects of society. Museums, art galleries and concert halls should be encouraged, and many deserve public support and should be free to all.

Carnegie knew that free libraries could nurture the public's mind. Free art can nurture the public's soul.

And there it is. I would hate to live in Ax's grey, lifeless world.

[Aqua Letifer]

@jolly said in Volunteers fired:

Art defines the better aspects of society. Museums, art galleries and concert halls should be encouraged, and many deserve public support and should be free to all.
Carnegie knew that free libraries could nurture the public's mind. Free art can nurture the public's soul.

I'd say it's far more important than that. There's a direct connection between how advanced a society is, and its advancement in the arts.

When we went to the moon, Slaughterhouse Five was published; Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, True Grit, the Wild Bunch, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service were in theatres; and Space Oddity, the Who’s Tommy, and In the Court of the Crimson King hit the record stores.

Look at what we had in the past couple years. Who were the poet laureates? Which new books were most celebrated? Which movies were most seen? Which songs were played the most on Spotify?

We need art history now more than ever. We need to remember what we're capable of.

[Aqua Letifer]

@mik said in Volunteers fired:

@jolly said in Volunteers fired:

Art defines the better aspects of society. Museums, art galleries and concert halls should be encouraged, and many deserve public support and should be free to all.

Carnegie knew that free libraries could nurture the public's mind. Free art can nurture the public's soul.

And there it is. I would hate to live in Ax's grey, lifeless world.

Shit just look at his movie recommendations. That's what you get when you have that mentality.

[Copper]

@aqua-letifer said in Volunteers fired:

We need art history now more than ever.

Yes, we do.

[Jolly]

@mik said in Volunteers fired:

@jolly said in Volunteers fired:

Art defines the better aspects of society. Museums, art galleries and concert halls should be encouraged, and many deserve public support and should be free to all.

Carnegie knew that free libraries could nurture the public's mind. Free art can nurture the public's soul.

And there it is. I would hate to live in Ax's grey, lifeless world.

It doesn't make sense. Ax is a pretty accomplished pianist. There has to be some there, there. How can you make music without soul, beauty, pain and passion?

[Mik]

Very true. His music is lovely. Yet what he often advocates is, in my view, a very soulless world. Could be just playing devil's advocate.

[Jolly]

Yes, he does like to watch the butterflies after he shakes the glass jar...