The Easel

2nd July 2019

Exhibiting Change: When Some of the Best-Attended Exhibitions in Museums Are Protests, Where Do Institutions Go from Here?

Museums should serve their communities. Multiple recent protests about museum practices suggest there is room for improvement. A broader focus than white male artists would be a good start, though only a “drop in the bucket”. One museum director advocates abandoning “the old model of museum as temple … the most important book a museum director should be reading is the census”.

Lubaina Himid’s colorful paintings explore the influence of the African diaspora

Himid has the voice of an activist. She charges that Britain’s “selective version of the past” erases black people. To make that point with her art, she has drawn on the work of satirists like William Hogarth. Himid often puts her figures in formal groupings, in the style of eighteenth century paintings. Satire, she says, helps with the “task of taking apart old ways of holding on to power.”