“After the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., allowed the police to use its property to stage a response to a protest over George Floyd’s death, its director asked the police to gather elsewhere and issued a public apology,” write Robin Pogrebin and Julia Jacobs in Sunday’s (6/7) New York Times. “In the period of protests, many arts organizations have entered the fray…. Some responses have landed more successfully than others, namely the impassioned statement from Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian, who called on his professional cohort to step up…. Many organizations that view themselves as enlightened, progressive institutions decided they could no longer sit on the sidelines…. The conversation about the complacency of arts groups was building long before their recent public statements of solidarity or their posting of black boxes and #BlackoutTuesday on Instagram were judged insufficient…. Melanie A. Adams, the director of the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum … said, ‘Sometimes with these situations, for the next few months we’ll all wave the social justice flag, and then we’ll go back to our corners,’ she said, ‘I’m hoping that’s not going to be what happens this time.’ ”
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