AFA 22nd Anniversary

22nd Anniversary 64 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com 2021 in Review TOP MUSEUM ACQUISITIONS i i BY DANIEL GRANT For almost all of 2020 and much of 2021, many museums weren’t open or were only open sporadically due to concerns related to the pandemic. Some institutions highlighted “virtual” exhibitions, but the novelty wore off quickly. Meanwhile, a growing percentage of the museum-going public was less interested in what was on view than what was not: works by women artists, African-American artists, works by nonwestern artists, exhibitions that examined the troubled state of the world; many museums answered the call with new exhibits and expanded collecting parameters. Frustration over the lack of ethnic and gender equity and criticism of income inequality among staff has shaken many institutions to their core. Some of this discontent has come from a growing number of museum employees who have sought to unionize. Staffers at both the Walters Art Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art formed unions, as did employees at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Complaining about management’s refusal to negotiate new contracts, the union representing more than two hundred employees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston held a one-day strike in November. >>> : Fig. 1: Tatiana Parcero (b. 1967), Interior Cartography #35, 1996. Chromogenic color print and acetate, 9⅜ × 6 ⁄ inches. The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gift of Helen Kornblum in honor of Roxana Marcoci. © 2021 Tatiana Parcero. Fig. 2: Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012), Singing Head, 1968. Bronze. H. 8¼, W. 6, D. 8 in. San Francisco Museum of Art; Gift of The Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida Collection (PS20.026). © 2021 Mora-Catlett Family/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.