Caring Matters

BY Kelli morgan, PhD

CARING MATTERS
How Collective Care Shapes a New Institutional Culture and The Clay Studio’s New Place

I have always described my curatorial practice as a care praxis because my approach centers people over objects. As debates regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) abound in the arts and culture sector, my curatorial radar is constantly active because building a genuine culture of DEI within any arts institution is no small feat. This is primarily because genuine DEI work necessitates that institutions decenter themselves to share the seat of power with surrounding communi- ties. Even more so, the work requires that both the interpretation and the display of art objects is informed by all people with relationships to those objects. As beautiful and compelling as I find visual culture to be, it is nothing without people.

Accordingly, I was overjoyed when Jennifer Zwilling, Curator and Director of Artistic Programs, invited me to be the project evaluator for Making Place Matter—The Clay Studio’s inaugural exhibition in its new building in South Kensington, Philadelphia. Focusing on an idea of place, The Clay Studio was determined to move into South Kensington not as a behemoth arts institution looking to bestow its resources on the residents of South Kensington; rather, the institution wanted to become an active member in an already vibrant arts community. As early as 2016, Clay Studio staff visited various members and community organizations throughout South Kensington and did the unusual—they listened. For more than three years, the institution learned about the dynamic arts and community programming already happening in South Kensington and moved into the place the community needed. Never have I observed an arts organization of The Clay Studio’s stature take the time and the care to establish genuine trust with a vast community of color. In my experience, large arts organizations typically invite BIPOC communities into their facilities once the objective of a particular exhibition or program is already set. The Clay Studio’s approach was different in that it wanted the community of South Kensington to inform not only the direction and the narrative of Making Place Matter, but it also wanted the community to inform the direction and the place of the institution itself.

Once vital information was gathered from various members of the South Kensing- ton community, The Clay Studio established an Exhibition Council. Comprised of artists, teachers, neighbors, students, and a diverse array of cultural workers, the Council became an essential faction of the Making Place Matter personnel. Bimonthly meetings were scheduled where Council members and Clay Studio staff worked collectively to define terms like “place” and “matter” to ensure that the exhibition’s title and overall premise was genuinely inclusive. More specifically, Council members worked with staff to translate the exhibition’s title and other textual materials into Spanish and Arabic. In the fall of 2020, I awaited these meetings with excitement because I had recently experienced one of the most traumatic events of my professional career. My attempts to establish a similar approach to the reinstallation of the American art galleries at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields resulted in a very harrowing public resignation. (1) Needless to say, participating in exhibition and community-building exercises with the people of South Kensington served as a very welcomed balm to my spirit.

María Albornoz, Community Engagement Teaching Artist at The Clay Studio and the Exhibition Community Organizer for Making Place Matter, led a group art activity at each Council meeting. Together on Zoom, we molded clay into cups, bowls, and painted tiles all while discussing the intricacies of our lives. We shared our pets, the artwork on our walls, discussed the politics of the day, met each other’s families, and saw into each other’s homes in ways that helped us genuinely connect to one another. Each meeting began with “moments of joy” where we shared instances of our own happiness and delight. These functioned as vital forms of inspiration as we were all struggling with the realities of prolonged quarantine and COVID-19. These shared moments set a very positive and comfortable tone, so much so that members often expressed how simply being together with the group was joyful. We celebrated each other’s accomplishments, often recognizing artists in the group who had work on view at The Clay Studio or at other arts institutions in Philadelphia. Once COVID restrictions allowed, the meetings took place in-person, beginning with an exciting gathering with Tiny WPA.

An organization dedicated to “building equity, better designed spaces, and stronger places in Philadelphia by supporting citizen-led design improvements,” (2) Tiny WPA was the perfect partner for The Clay Studio’s new community-centered mission. Accordingly, Council members worked with Tiny WPA to both design and build the gallery furniture for Making Place Matter. Giving Council members a stake in so much more than the exhibition itself, working with Tiny WPA didn’t simply invite the Council to contribute to the exhibition; rather, it allowed them to literally shape the gallery and the visitor experience in ways that they felt were important. Furthermore, Council members worked with me in our last meeting to compose brilliant object labels for works by all three exhibition artists. Using the Facilitator’s Guide to Design Thinking, developed by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, (3) we worked through exercises that provided limited curatorial scaffold- ing to allow participants to first execute then facilitate reflections that invited each participant to extract meaningful learning opportunities from the label-writing experience.

Members were divided into groups of three, each group was assigned an artist, and members were asked to interview one another about the artist and the artist’s work. In the first breakout session, members posed questions like: What’s the first thought that comes to mind when you see the object? Does the work remind you of any- thing, person, or place that you’ve had previous experience with? Why do you think this is a meaningful object to have on display? Although I drafted these questions beforehand, they served only as a guide to get group members started. Council members were also encouraged to ask their colleagues whatever questions they found important. In the second breakout session, Council members were asked to dig deeper. Meaning, I instructed them to ask probing questions that would delin- eate the “why” behind their colleagues’ initial answers. This process often reveals the story, the history, the memories, or the experiences that one brings to an object. Moreover, it frequently illuminates how we share similar visual literacies specifically through our unique everyday experiences. We then synthesized each groups’ answers into two to three “insights,” taking note of the overlap between different individuals’ thoughts about the artworks. Lastly, we used our insights to generate a Council-written label for each artist. Once more, collective label writing, much like furniture design, is another method through which communities can have a primary stake in shaping the place and the tenor of the overall gallery experience.

After nearly fifty years in its Old City location, The Clay Studio moved to South Kensington and discovered just how huge the possibilities were for significant insti- tutional change when an organization simply decides that it wants to. Determined to complicate the problematic gentrification that’s been occurring in South Kensington for years now, The Clay Studio used both its size and its influence to develop genuine relationships with dozens of community members: Taller Puertorriqueño, Norris Square Neighborhood Project, artists such as César Viveros, Kukuli Velarde, and Roberto Lugo who live in the neighborhood, and scores of others to shape a place where people matter more than anything.

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(1) Though my resignation didn’t sway public or institutional opinion immediately, my outspokenness eventually led to the resignation of Newfield’s director Charles Veneable after the institution published a very tone-deaf job description stating that the institution was seeking a new museum director that would maintain the institution’s “traditional, core, white audience.” Domenica Bongiovanni, “Curator calls Newfields culture toxic, discriminatory in resignation letter,” July 18, 2020, www.indystar.com/story/entertainment/arts/2020/07/18/ newfields-curator-says-discriminatory-workplace-toxic/5459574002/; Sarah Bahr, “Charles Venable Resigns as Head of Indianapolis Museum of Art,” February 17, 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/arts/design/ charles-venable-resigning-indianapolis-museum.html.

(2) To learn more about Tiny WPA and their mission, visit: www.tinywpa.org/our-mission.

(3) “Facilitator’s Guide: An Introduction to Design Thinking,” Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, hci.stanford.edu/dschool/resources/wallet/Wallet%20Facilitators%20Guide.pdf.