Lord Cultural News
March 2021
A curated review of this month’s cultural news
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Qaumajuq Qaumajuq, an Inuit art centre, opens March 27, 2021 in Winnipeg. (Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Featured Story:
Qaumajuq opens doors in Winnipeg, brings Northern art to the south in a new way

Qaumajuq, a $65-million Inuit art centre that opens Saturday and is billed as the largest public collection of Inuit art in the world, is not only impressive in scope. Read More

Discover this month
Our Clients and Lord
INCLUSION, DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND ACCESSIBILITY
Museums
Art and Culture
Technology
Our Clients and Lord
What is a contemporary art museum? In conversation with Gail Dexter Lord
The Week, March 31, 2021

There are museums and there are art galleries. Then there are art museums—think of the illustrious Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Louvre, Rijksmuseum or closer home, the National Gallery of Modern Art. 

But beyond what we have come to understand as museums and art galleries, there is a new update on how we view art museums, those that go beyond selling artworks and holding a rotating cast of exhibitions, and that harness technology, community support and new forms of storytelling.

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Can a New Alliance for Curators of Color Make the Museum World More Diverse?
ArtNews, March 26, 2021

Last week, the New York–based Association of Art Museum Curators Foundation (AAMC) announced that it would launch the Professional Alliance for Curators of Color, a new program meant to empower curators of color from around the world. The consortium will connect the first cohort of curators not only with each other but with the AAMC’s vast network of professional contacts within the curatorial field and beyond. In its press release announcing it, the AAMC said the new program “seeks to address issues of isolationism, racism, inequity, and lack of access that are far too often the experience for BIPOC curators.”

Lord Cultural Resources has been engaged to provide advisory services to the AAMC curatorial cohort. Advisors include Gail Lord, President, Joy Bailey-Bryant, President US, Kathleen Brown, Senior Practice Leader, Javier Jimenez, Director, and Associate Consultants Veronica Gonzales and Monica Sylvain.

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The Smithsonian is on a massive search for six new museum directors. Their work could reshape the institution for generations.
The Washington Post, March 24, 2021

Like museums around the world, the Smithsonian is preparing to reopen in a landscape fraught with uncertainty.

Its leaders worry about whether visitors will return in person whenever the phased restart commences — no dates have yet been announced — and whether the gains in virtual audiences made during the coronavirus pandemic can be maintained. As they improvise with safety protocols and capacity increases over the next six to 18 months, they must also address calls for social justice, diversity and equity that continue to reverberate in their field.

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First look: Hong Kong's mighty M+ museum building is finally finished
The Art Newspaper, March 23, 2021

Newly released footage shows the full extent of the vast 65,000 sq. m space and the designs striking use of straight lines and concrete.

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Our Work with the West Kowloon Cultural District
6 Things You Shouldn’t Miss At The On-Going Bihar Museum Biennale
Elle, March 22, 2021

The first of its kind Bihar Museum Biennale is here. Hosted at the Bihar Museum, thirteen Indian and six international museums are participating in this week-long event, starting today, 22 March. With virtual exhibition tours, a food trail, an international conference and masterclasses planned over an intensive week of the Biennale, here’s a list of things you shouldn’t miss out on.

Gail Lord was part of the Panel Container vs Platform: Museum as an open space for conversation that took place on March 23.

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View our Work with the Bihar Museum
FEMA Awards $4.1 Million to Create the EcoExploratorio Resiliency Institute
Newsroom, The Weekly Journal, Mar 10, 2021 Updated Mar 16, 2021

To support efforts on the island aimed at raising awareness of the importance of hazard mitigation, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) awarded a $4.1 million grant to the EcoExploratorio Resiliency Institute (ERI). This unique center in Puerto Rico will provide guidance on resilience and other mitigation topics to the public. The funds are provided by FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.

In 2012, Kathleen Brown, Senior Practice Leader, was engaged to develop the original concept planning and development for EcoExploratorio.

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Construction completes on Renzo Piano's long-awaited Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in LA
Archinect, March 10, 2021

Archinect's last report of the highly anticipated Academy Museum of Motion Pictures reported the Museum's planned opening and potential delay due to Covid-19 concerns. Today, The Academy Museum announces its inaugural programming and the official public opening, which will occur on September 30, 2021. To kick start its public debut, the Museum kicks off with its virtual programs in April.

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Our Work with the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Big partnership for Center for Black Excellence and Culture
WKOW, March 5, 2021

Madison's Center for Black Excellence and Culture is teaming up with a world-renowned planning firm. The center, which will open on Madison's south side in 2023, is partnering with Lord Cultural Resources for Business Planning.

Lord Cultural Resources has been engaged to develop a master plan for the Center for Black Excellence and Culture.

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INCLUSION, DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND ACCESSIBILITY
In diversity and equity campaign, Walters Art Museum recognises the tarnished history of its founders
The Art Newspaper, March 15,2021

Institution issues newly written history that discloses its founders’ pro-Confederacy stance and business ties to racist labour practices in the South.

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For the First Time Ever, the Rijksmuseum Will Hang Works by Female Dutch Masters in Its Most Prestigious Gallery
ArtNet, March 11, 2021

The museum is launching a research project to uncover forgotten women's histories at the museum.

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As Museums Move to Diversify, Newly Created Roles for Inclusion, Equity, and Belonging Take on New Significance
ArtNet, March 11, 2021

For the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the reckoning followed a field trip gone awry. In the spring of 2019, a group of middle schoolers, all students of color from the Helen Y. Davis Leadership Academy in Dorchester, Massachusetts, were treated to a visit to the museum as a reward for good grades and good behavior. There, they were allegedly greeted with racist invective and profiled by museum staff and fellow visitors alike. According to Academy teacher and chaperone Marvelyne Lamy, a museum employee told the children that “no food, no drink, and no watermelon” were allowed in the galleries. In an impassioned Facebook post uploaded after the visit, Lamy also described in detail how the students were harassed by fellow museumgoers and tailed closely through the galleries by museum security, who reprimanded them disproportionately compared to white students visiting from another school. She swore she would never go back to the MFA.

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Museums
University to return Benin bronze
University of Aberdeen, March 25, 2021

The University of Aberdeen is to return a Benin bronze - a sculpture looted by British soldiers in Nigeria in one of the most notorious examples of the pillaging of cultural treasures associated with 19th century European colonial expansion.

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Decolonizing the Hunt for Dinosaurs and Other Fossils
The New York Times, March 22, 2021

Younger paleontologists are working to overcome some historical legacies of their discipline and change how people learn about natural history.

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Members of US museums association narrowly reject proposal to contemplate a change in guidelines on art sales
The Art Newspaper, March 16, 2021

Amid debate, AAMD votes 91-88 against exploring a controversial revision of rules to allow proceeds to finance collections care.

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Pandemic anniversary: the things museums should learn from our plague year
The Art Newspaper, March 11, 2021

Although “thumbstoppable” social media content is essential, the online world has dark consequences too, says Tristram Hunt, the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

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In an Unusual Move, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Will Use Funds From Deaccessioned Artworks to Pay Staff Salaries
ArtNet, March 9, 2021

Critics warn that donors might be discouraged from giving artworks if they fear they will be sold off when rainy days come.

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As state restrictions drag on, pressure grows for more California museums to reopen
The Art Newspaper, March 3, 2021

With lockdown lifted for nail salons and zoos, anger rises over arts institutions’ continued closure, estimated to cost the sector $22m a day.

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The Uffizi Gallery Will Display Its Collection of Renaissance Masterpieces Across Italy as Part of the New ‘Uffizi Diffusi’ Program
ArtNet, March 3, 2021

The island of Elba could exhibit some of the Uffizi's Napoleon-themed works in time for the 200th anniversary of the military leader's death.

Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is looking to share its wealth. The museum is launching a new program called “Uffizi Diffusi”—Italian for “scattered Uffizi”—to exhibit works from its renowned collection of Renaissance masterpieces at as many as 100 sites across the greater Tuscany region.

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We’re a Group of Museum Directors Who Pooled Resources During the Pandemic. Here’s Why Others Should Consider Doing the Same
ArtNet, March 3, 2021

Museums are traditionally very good at telling, but not very good at listening. This is obvious not only in the ways museums are often removed from the public they’re meant to serve, but in the ways they’re distant from each other. Yet unexpectedly, the pandemic has afforded museums and arts organizations all kinds of opportunities to close some of that distance, and the results have us rethinking what’s possible.

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The changing face of the museum sector
Museums Association, March 1, 2021

There are any number of developments set to reshape the museum world and the roles of those who work in it over the next decade. Some are universal: the fallout from the pandemic, digital advances and globalisation.

But there are sector-specific ones that are already triggering reflection followed by action in terms of what museums are for and how they can continue to act as a platform for the stories and experiences of communities, local, national and global.

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Art and Culture
Saudi Arabia pushes forward with plans for cultural 'renaissance' with vast light festival full of both local and big-name artists
The Art Newspaper, March 22, 2021

Agencies seem to be betting that time and increased exposure to the kingdom will wear down Western qualms over its human rights record.

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Basic Income Guarantee Canadian municipal arts councils
Toronto Arts Council, March 20, 2021

As we come to terms with the one-year anniversary of COVID lockdowns, Canada’s arts community is focused on creating a brighter and more sustainable future. A future that takes advantage of the upheaval wrought by the pandemic, to repair the broken model outlined by Marsha Lederman on March 13 (Eight ways to fix the arts industry, postpandemic). To be effective, this repair will include provision of a Basic Income Guarantee.

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Technology
I Visited the Digital Beeple Art Museum and All I Got Was an Aggressive Pitch for My Money
ArtNet, March 25, 2021

So I went to the Beeple museum. What, you say, is the Beeple museum? I refer to the B.20 Museum, built by the Metapurse fund, designed by Voxel Architects, and wholly existing within the online universe of CryptoVoxels.

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Museums Used to Pay Huge Fees for Personal Couriers to Travel With Major Loans. New Technology Could Mean They Don’t Have to
ArtNet, March 19, 2021

The acceptance of virtual couriers is rapidly transforming the way artworks travel around the world.

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Virtual museum law conference shows how the pandemic has affected institutional administration
The Art Newspaper, March 15, 2021

From dealing with cyberattacks on newly implemented digital offerings, to figuring out how to renegotiate a postponed loan, the coronavirus has raised a whole new crop of issues for museums.

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