How Museums Are Diversifying Their Collections to Include Black and Brown Artists

Rex Goreleigh, Spring Pruning, 1966. Courtesy of Malcolm Peyton and Barbara Winchester

A 2019 Williams College survey of the collections of 18 major US museums found that, of a selection from works by 9,000 named artists, just 1.2% of works were made by Black artists. A panel of museum curators and directors will consider how museums are now working to diversify their collections.

This symposium—in person or live via Zoom— jointly organized by the Arts Council of Princeton and the Princeton University Art Museum and cosponsored by the Princeton University Humanities Council, is set to accompany Retrieving the Art of James Wilson Edwards and a Circle of Black Artists, an exhibition on view from October 14 through December 3 at the Arts Council of Princeton, Paul Robeson Arts Center.

Free registration via Zoom here. (When prompted, click to sign in as “attendee.”)

Join the speakers after the program for a reception and to view the exhibition at the Arts Council of Princeton, 102 Witherspoon Street.

Participants:  

• Introduction: James Steward, Director, Princeton University Art Museum
• Panelists: 
  • Maura Reilly, Director, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, and author of Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating (2018)
  • Brittany Webb, Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth-Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
  • Catherine Evans, Deputy Director, Collections and Curatorial Strategies, The Newark Museum of Art
  • Laura Giles, Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970, Curator of Prints and Drawings, Princeton University Art Museum