Institutional Antics
Of course, institutions beyond number are now implicated in such recognizable and obvious strategizing. Perhaps hoping that nobody notices, organizations that previously seemed happy enough with projecting their white character and identity have been working to shed these perceptions and declare themselves to be wholly on board with diversity, equity, and inclusion. One dominant reason as to why it’s difficult to challenge white supremacy in the art establishment is because, at the drop of a hat, previously ingrained disrespect for Black artists can be set to one side, in preference for a public image that categorically refuses to recognize its own bad behavior. Instead, these institutions present themselves as having always been friendly spaces in which artists of color have long been recognized and appreciated.
Regarding Britain’s history of modern art, one of the pioneering Caribbean-born contributors was Ronald Moody, born in Jamaica at the turn of the twentieth century and making his way to London in the early 1920s, with ambitions to become a dentist. Moody switched interests and became instead an accomplished, versatile, and prolific sculptor. Not that the British art establishment noticed. Moody and his art were respected by his Caribbean-born fellow artists and visionary art lovers. Beyond such individuals, regard for Moody was scant and it was not until Rasheed Araeen’s art historically significant The Other Story exhibition, held at the Hayward Gallery in London in 1989, that Moody’s work started to gain wider appreciation. Moody though, had died in 1984 and did not live to see his work latterly described as having been "rediscovered" (rather than discovered) by the likes of Tate Britain. Tate’s decades-long disregard for Moody was obliterated in an instant when he emerged with his “reputation restored.” A feature in Tate magazine, in 2003, opened with: “self-taught wood-carver Ronald Moody, a former dentist born in Jamaica, is revealed as one of Britain's most remarkable Modernist sculptors in a new display at Tate Britain.” The glaring problem with such handbrake turns in institutional attitudes to Black artists is the emphatic absence of any sort of declaration of mea culpa - an exclamation of apology or remorse on the part of institutions that their newfound respect for Black artists has been many decades in the making. But without apologies, without frank admission that an institution has turned its back on its own histories of white supremacy, we are left with not much more than an embrace of Black artists that looks suspiciously like a sleight of hand. Or, as a dictionary might put it, “something that seems good but is not real or effective and that is done especially to take attention away from something else that is embarrassing or unpleasant.”
The above extracts are from Eddie Chambers' “Institutional Antics", Art Journal, Winter 2023, 82:4, 5-7