Guest Curators

We want to say thank you to our outgoing Guest Curator, Clodagh Brennan Harvey! If you missed a chance to see her fantastic artifacts, please stop by the Guest Curator Archive Page. You can also examine all of our past Guest Curator’s as well.

Welcome to our Guest Curator, Peter Tokofsky!

Law and Disorder: Reflections on Some Objects, and on Museums

Museums – Can they build back better?

In the aftermath of 2020, American museums face tremendous challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic and the associated economic slowdown, as well as renewed national attention to issues of racial and social justice, have profoundly impacted museums. Some estimates predict that almost half of all museums in the United States have already or will soon close permanently due to economic strains. Even institutions with rich resources are affected. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York eliminated over 400 staff positions and recently acknowledged that it is considering selling art from its collection in order to maintain financial stability, as a number of other museums have done recently. Questions about the future of public gatherings, capacity of gallery spaces with social distancing measures, and related issues generated by the pandemic not only necessitate new financial models, but also throw into question some basic assumptions about museum functioning. Just at a time when many museums have made significant efforts to become more accessible and serve as broader community resources, the possibilities for doing so have narrowed, at least temporarily.

Increasing national attention to racial justice, belated as it is, has fueled movements within museums and other arts institutions to address racial inequity and social injustices. The appalling lack of diversity among staff in many museums was already clear, and acknowledged in many instances. Several years ago, for example, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles appointed a committee to investigate and promote diversity and inclusion at the institution. The 17-member committee consisted of top executives and program leaders from across the complex organization. As it turned out, all 17 were white, prompting swift criticism from staff and leading to a slow and bumpy acknowledgement from the top that more inclusive and substantial steps would be necessary.

Critics have pointed to the lack of diversity in American art museum leadership for many years, especially among governing boards, which, rather than representing the institution’s stake-holders, are populated by an elite cohort of wealthy individuals, many of whom occupy positions at multiple institutions and whose main qualification seems to be their inherited wealth. At the other end of the spectrum, most people of color working in museums fill positions in the lowest-paid departments such as security, facilities, and education.  An Instagram account titled “Change the Museum” reveals the impact of this disparity in power and influence within museums. Describing its mission as “Pressuring US museums to move beyond lip service proclamations by amplifying tales of unchecked racism,” the account has over 600 posts detailing everyday aggressions toward employees of color and institutional policies that deter diversity.

The lack of diversity in museums goes beyond staffing. The range of materials featured in museums guided by canonical narratives of (art) history remains extremely limited. The rise of outstanding art and history museums as part of the Smithsonian and elsewhere featuring the achievements of under –represented populations have helped rectify the inequity, as have, of course, folk art museums and related institutions. The growing willingness and interest in presenting a more diverse range of artists, as well as exploring the ways in which the production and acquisition of art and artifacts are deeply connected to white supremacy, should lead to a lasting transformation of museums. This process of re-thinking and re-installing museum collections will likely continue with new impetus in coming years.

However, one aspect of museum practice that contributes to what some people define as white supremacy culture, or at least to a culture of institutional authority which has cultivated the problems we are now combatting, continues largely unexamined. Regardless of what materials are presented and whether the team organizing the presentation is diverse, museums speak with voices of authority and position themselves as superior to their visitors. This is most clear in the texts on walls decreeing anonymous information. The goal of most exhibitions appears to be to inform the audience about someone or something they presumably don’t already know, but which, from the museum’s perspective, is important. “Important” is one of the most common words on art museum labels, but rarely do those labels explain why the object is important or who established it to be so. Museums order and present knowledge for visitors rather than engaging audiences in a process of knowledge formation. Most museum exhibitions can be summarized as “I’m going to tell you about something important which you should know about” or “This person/artist is important so let me tell you about them.” Folk art museums and folklorists do not get a pass on this merely because they inform us about materials created by different people and societies. We frequently find examples of this language of authority in posts and presentations by folklorists.

In the following descriptions of a few objects I am fortunate to possess, I endeavor to present them in a way that seeks to engage my audience with questions and issues that extend beyond the specific details of each. I propose a particular reading of this group of items in the context of the social challenges we face today. Each of these objects can tell other stories, as I hope they might for readers. Any story we tell with them has its own validity.

Recommended reading sequence:

1)  “Sheriff’s Department Bus”

2)  “If you got the blues…”

3)  “Limozene” (painted car)

4)  “Defiled: tweakin & geekin!”

5)  Berlin Wall Fragments

Alfred “Big Al” Taplet, 1994. 24×20 inches. Plywood.

Howard Finster, 1994. 23×5.5 inches. Plywood.

Howard Finster, 1994. 23×5.5 inches. Plywood.

Alfred “Big Al” Taplet, 1994. 24×20 inches. Plywood.

I studied in Germany for 18 months ending in July of 1989. When I departed, no one seemed to have any inkling that the East German revolution would bring down the Berlin Wall just a few months later. My friend Joachim in Berlin went out and gathered small bits of the breached barrier to share with me. I placed these two pieces in a case with certificate I purchased in Berlin some time later. The paint and composition of the Wall fragments in that case revealed that they clearly were not genuine despite the claim. As an artifact itself, however, the certificate and its English text reveal the interest tourists have in connecting with true history. I end this presentation with these Wall fragments as a reminder that social change can come peacefully and unexpectedly. Though few suspected the imminent end to the East German regime in the summer of 1989, people committed to greater freedom continued their efforts. Those efforts in East Germany eventually led to a true revolution without the loss of a single life.

Norbert Kox, 2018. 20×15.75 inches. Canvas.

I acquired this work while on a break from jury service at the Los Angeles Superior Courthouse in 1993. An elderly Chicano man put various items for sale on the top of a wall bordering the plaza in front of the court building. Most of the objects – toy cars, metal badges, belt buckles – were not unique or made by the vendor. This bus in a plastic case caught my eye. The man explained that he purchased the cast iron bus at the shop at the Sheriff’s Department. Although this shop does not exist today, it is mind-boggling to imagine a gift shop as part of a Sheriff’s department which has committed such extreme abuses of residents that one former sheriff is serving a federal prison sentence for obstructing an FBI investigation, and the Los Angeles County board of supervisors is currently investigating ways to remove the current sheriff from (elected) office as well. The man told me that he added the chained “Homies” along with the Homie Hound sitting nearby and encased the scene in a plastic box. Homies are collectable plastic figurines created by California artist David Gonzalez in an effort to create toys that look more like people he knows. My jury service that year was memorable for a number of reasons in addition to being an occasion for adding this original object to my collection. I served on a trial in which the defendant was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol. The accused, a slight white woman, was a criminal defense attorney herself. This fact alone was enough for 2 or 3 members of the jury to declare her guilty. As they viewed it, anyone who would defend a criminal should be punished. I remember this clearly because it gave me an early insight into the political culture which has contributed to our nation’s current situation. Celebrity defense attorney Mark Geragos represented the accused. At the time, he was in the news for his defense of Clinton-associate Susan McDougall, a trial taking place simultaneous to ours (as the bailiff inappropriately brought to the attention of the jury). Geragos’s presentation did not impress me, and his client would have been found guilty if the prosecution had not made the mistake of keeping a folklorist on the jury. My skepticism led to doubts whether the facts presented in this case amounted to guilt. The defendant had dined at Chez Jay in Santa Monica — a watering hole I knew well and where my friends and I had never eaten anything other than the free peanuts offered to patrons. My knowledge of the locale raised questions for me about whether the defendant truly had just a single glass of wine with dinner, as she claimed, but I saw no productive purpose in condemning this individual to the criminal justice system. Surely she had friends who would intervene if, indeed, her drinking put herself and others at risk, as alleged in the charges. A key to the defense in the case was that that the incident took place in the aftermath of the uprisings in response to the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers who had brutally beat Rodney King. Geragos wanted the jury to believe that the police were on edge and ready to pull over anyone. There were even 3 officers in the patrol car, a fact the defense pointed to repeatedly; only 2 testified and one of them was sympathetic to the defendant. In the end, the defense used the suffering of Black lives to benefit a white professional. There is a connection between the politics of race playing out in the courtroom and the bus line-up in this piece. The artist has created a visual commentary on the common fate of young men of color who suffer from systemic abuses at the hands of law enforcement. I placed a Homie on top of the case to symbolize the possibility and hope that a young man who dresses differently than his white counterparts can perhaps some day walk the street without fear of being assumed a criminal.

Artist unknown. Ca. 1993. Addition by Peter Tokofsky. Approx. 9.5x4x4 inches.

If you are a folklorist or a collector of folklore/popular culture artifacts, please consider becoming a Guest Curator. Your objects will be highlighted here on a rotating basis.

All we ask is that the objects be yours, you have a photograph of the objects, and all or most of the information about the object (see the guidelines below, for more details).

Guest Curator Guidelines:

1. Artifacts must fall within the subject of our website (folklore, folk art, popular culture, etc).

2. Artifacts must be a part of your own personal collection.

3. Submissions must be limited to no more than five artifacts.

4. Submissions must contain a photograph of the artifact, as well as the title, purpose, country of origin, culture , materials, and dimensions of the artifact.

5. We also would like your photograph and a brief biography to accompany the collection.

Please contact, flpcgallery@gmail.com and write Guest Curator in the subject line for further information or with any questions. We cannot wait to highlight your collection!