I’ve coated a variety of sensitive topics throughout my time as an arts journalist: sexual harassment, conflicts of curiosity, cash laundering. Few have provoked as a lot discomfort as the topic of this column. And that topic is… docents: volunteer educators who information guests by way of museums.
Again in autumn 2021, docents grew to become a proxy for the tradition struggle ripping by way of the US when the Artwork Institute of Chicago (AIC) introduced it could droop its docent programme in favour of paid educators. The purpose, docents had been informed in a letter, was to allow “group members of all revenue ranges to take part” and “reply to points of sophistication and revenue fairness”.
It set off a firestorm. Docents had been livid at what they noticed as their unceremonious dismissal. Conservative media labelled the transfer, which focused a majority white and feminine docent corps, a transparent case of “reverse racism”.
What you in all probability didn’t hear, nonetheless, is how the story ended. The AIC’s director of training, Veronica Stein, who had spearheaded the overhaul, left the museum in April 2022, one 12 months after she joined. (She did declined to touch upon her time there.) Though the museum had initially deliberate to reinstate volunteers in 2023, after implementing the paid programme, it accelerated the method, reintroducing each in autumn 2022. (A spokesperson stated the museum moved up the timeline to accommodate post-pandemic demand.) Right now, there are 60 volunteers from the unique docent corps whereas 40 new ones are as a consequence of be a part of later this 12 months. A staff of 16 paid educators handles all official faculty excursions.
It isn’t laborious to know why docents are a sensitive topic. (Notably, many establishments have stopped utilizing the phrase—derived from docere, Latin for “to show”—which in some quarters calls to thoughts pictures of out-of-touch “women who lunch”, opting as an alternative for phrases like “volunteer educator” or “volunteer information”.) They’re typically the primary level of contact at establishments making an attempt extraordinarily laborious to alter the face they current to the world—to make it youthful, much less white, much less elitist and extra engaged with up to date life. Docents, then again, are predominantly white, of retirement age and upper-middle class. They embody the tensions between the established order and alter enjoying out at legacy establishments throughout the nation.
But it could be a mistake to imagine that these points are new. Again in 2005, an identical fracas broke out on the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork (NGA) in Washington, DC. The museum despatched docents a letter informing them that every one excursions can be placed on pause whereas it overhauled the programme. And, similar to at this time, the choice coincided with a broader paradigm shift, as museums started to prioritise the customer over the item. For docents, that meant a sometimes-challenging transition away from lecture-based excursions and in the direction of a extra interactive strategy. However the blowback towards the docents’ dismissal on the NGA was so sturdy that the museum swiftly reversed itself. The then-director even issued an apology for the “misunderstanding”.
Complete retraining
Different museums have since adopted by way of with ending their docent programmes, together with the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, in 2014 and, extra lately, Alabama’s Birmingham Museum of Artwork, the Oakland Museum of California and the Portland Artwork Museum in Oregon. One other more and more frequent strategy—adopted by the AIC, the Advantageous Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) and others—is to position faculty excursions below the auspices of paid workers and provide docents a extra restricted purview, like main particular exhibition excursions or assembling supplies for lecturers.
“We appeared on the execs and cons, and determined it was within the museum’s greatest curiosity to retain our docents, however we needed to make it work for us,” says Sheila Pressley, FAMSF’s director of training. Each docent needed to undergo a complete retraining, together with necessary fairness coaching. “It has been very troublesome for lots of docents,” Pressley says. “We now have had some attrition.”
On the identical time, FAMSF launched programmes designed to draw a youthful, extra numerous information pool. (When the museum hosted the exhibition Soul of a Nation: Artwork within the Age of Black Energy 1963-1983 in 2019, solely two of its roughly 200 docents had been Black, Pressley says.) Right now, volunteers can signal on to provide excursions of 4 objects that match below a selected theme. In contrast to docents, who practice for 2 years, these new gallery guides take an eight-week course.
As museums more and more current the work of artists who deal explicitly with race and politics, clear boundaries and specialised coaching are paramount, says Porchia Moore, a museum research professor on the College of Florida. In any other case, “you’ve gotten folks taking youngsters to take a look at a chunk of art work that has excessive racial implications, however they select to not speak about race, or are uncomfortable speaking about race”, she says. “They may keep away from the work altogether, keep away from questions on race or don’t have any understanding of the historic context. That turns into a difficulty for the museum.”
Personal museums just like the Broad in Los Angeles and Glenstone in Maryland—with extra monetary sources than public establishments—have chosen to forego volunteer docents altogether. Glenstone pays its 50 guides (who vary in age from early 20s to mid-80s) greater than $20 per hour. Their focus is on partaking the customer in significant dialog moderately than delivering speaking factors. “It’s essential for guides to have humility, to really feel that they will study from the customer,” says Michelle Clair, Glenstone’s senior supervisor of customer expertise. “You additionally should be a folks particular person. It helps when somebody has been a server or labored the customer-service desk at an airport.”
It’s unclear if docents may have a spot within the museums of the longer term. Working parallel to the controversy about how greatest to greet guests is one about how museums deal with and compensate their employees as extra staff unionise. Twenty years from now, reliance on unpaid labour of any form could appear backwards and antiquated. However, in the meanwhile, FAMSF’s Pressley is assured that loads of dedicated docents will survive, and even thrive, amid the trade’s overhaul. “Docents are lifelong learners,” she says. “So if you’ll be able to phrase it as, ‘That is the most recent, most attention-grabbing and thrilling chapter of artwork historical past,’ they’re on board. Docents don’t need to be telling outdated tales when there are new tales to inform.”
