Thoughts on women’s rights and our work in the museum

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I know I am not alone in being depressed and appalled by the erosion of women’s rights in this country and around the world. Rape is used as a tool of power, terror, and abuse in war zones in Europe and Africa. Women are forced from their jobs and girls are turned away from schools in Afghanistan. In the US court rulings and new legislation strip control of reproductive and health decisions from women. The current atmosphere of intolerance encompasses legislation negatively impacting LGBTQ+ individuals, and the banning and censoring of books, to mention just two more troubling issues.

Simone Leigh, No Face (Crown Heights), 2018, Terracotta, graphite ink, salt-fired porcelain, and epoxy, 20 in x 8 in; 50.8 cm x 20.32 cm, Director’s Discretionary Fund, 2019

In my role as Director of The Phillips Collection, I want to share some thoughts about these troubling issues, and how our museum reflects and embraces our mission driven values of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion that are so boldly stated in our strategic plan, crafted and adopted by staff and board leadership, and that continues to guide our work in all ways. Our diversity values impact our workforce, our hiring, our institutional culture, our board of trustees, our collecting policies, the focus of our exhibitions and programs in the museum and in the community.

Our collecting policy explicitly embraces adding diverse voices—people of color and women. I want to mention just a few of the women that are now represented in our collection, acquired within the past ten years or so (by no means intended as a comprehensive list): Jae Ko, Kate Shepherd, Arlene Shechet, Zilia Sánchez, Nekisha Durrett, Ranjani Shettar, Nara Park, Zoë Charlton, Renée Stout, Marta Pérez García, Mequitta Ahuja, Janet Taylor Pickett, Barbara Liotta, Regi Müller, Tayo Heuser, Linn Meyers, Alyson Shotz, Jean Meisel, Jennifer Wen Ma, Helen C. Frederick, Bettina Pousttchi, Jeanne Silverthorne, Sandra Cinto, Julia Wachtel. I have been true to this goal of diversification in many of the purchases made with the Director’s Discretionary funding including works by Simone Leigh, Dindga McCannon, and the complete portfolio of the Guerilla Girls.

Nekisha Durrett with her artwork Airshaft (2021) in the bridges of The Phillips Collection. Photo: Brendan Canty

Many of these artists were featured in Vesela Sretenović’s Intersections exhibition series that was inaugurated in 2009, or from projects curated by Klaus Ottmann or Adrienne Childs, among others. The acquisition of the work by Zilia Sánchez resulted from the major monographic exhibition that Vesela organized in 2019 that traveled to New York and Ponce. Our exhibition of the Debra and Dennis Scholl collection of contemporary Australian Aboriginal women artists resulted in a stunning gift of six ceremonial poles. Marta Pérez García’s work entered the collection from our centennial community juried exhibit Inside Outside Upside Down, (curated by Elsa Smithgall and Camille Brown with Renée Stout) an introduction that resulted in her current Intersections exhibition Restos-Traces.

Marta Pérez García, Restos-Traces, 2021-2022, photo by AK Blythe

Our programming has also reflected women’s rights issues. Programs can be platforms for learning, exchange, and participation. In 2018 we mounted a solo installation by Australian artist, Halcyon fellow, Georgia Saxelby, To Future Women. Installed at the one-year anniversary of the Women’s March of January 2017, this project involved a community making, participatory letter writing activity, resulting in a time capsule of hundreds of expressions of anger, hope, sorrow, and solemn reflection. On February 14, 2018, Violence Against Women Day, we staged a panel discussion that brought an array of voices to the stage. How appropriate that this summer we have hosted Marta Pérez García’s powerful and disturbing Restos-Traces exhibition that confronts us with the resilience and strength of women who have survived domestic violence. Later this month, as the exhibition reaches its conclusion, programming will allow our communities to convene for further discussion, growth, and healing. In addition, I recall the 2020 annual Artists of Conscience Forum with the theme of “Women, Race and Representation,” celebrating the creativity of women highlighted throughout the Intersections series.

Installation image of Zilia Sánchez’s Juana de Arco (Joan of Arc), 1987

In 2020 we engaged in a heated debate about whether to install Black Lives Matter banners on our façade. We heeded the advice of then Chief Diversity Officer, Makeba Clay, that we should first “show the receipt,” and kept on doing our work towards diversity and inclusion, rather than making a performative gesture. Later that year we installed a work by conceptual artist Jenny Holzer which included two large banners “Moral Injury” and “So Vote.”  For me, that remains the key message and opportunity. It applies no matter what any individual’s opinion might be. In previous years we have hosted voter registration drives and citizenship ceremonies, activities we will continue to embrace. Our support of these activities seems especially important in a time when political forces are attempting to thwart the right of enfranchisement of the citizens of our country.

Very soon we plan to hold internal museum wide discussions with the participation of artist-activists with whom we have worked before. My hope is that this forum might afford a safe platform for a rich exchange of ideas and proposals. Additionally, next month internal staff will commence with the Diversity Intergroup Dialogue Series (DIDS). These sessions will afford each of us an opportunity to delve further in topics that reflect DEAI areas and methods to increase our cultural sensitivity.

Public programs will be announced in the near future.

We hope you continue to join us on our journey.

Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Syaw (Fishnet), 2014

A Look Back on 12 Years as Chief Curator

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After 12 years of distinguished leadership and curatorial accomplishments, Klaus Ottmann has stepped down from his role as Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Academic Affairs. During his tenure at the Phillips, Ottmann oversaw the curatorial, conservation, and registrarial departments, as well as led our major academic partnership with the University of Maryland. Here, Klaus shares some of his favorite memories.

What makes The Phillips Collection different from other museums?

The Phillips is unique in many ways but one of its most distinctive characteristics is the emphasis on creating new conversations between art works, which keeps the collection alive, relevant, and new, even if one has seen some of the individual works in other contexts before. This is what distinguishes The Phillips Collection from other more static museums, where art is not allowed to thrive and acquire new layers of meaning.

What are your hopes for the Phillips’s next century?

To continue to strive for more diversity within its collection and exhibitions without abandoning its foundational mission as a museum of modern and contemporary art where the intimate and experimental meet.

What exhibitions/programs/partnerships are you most proud of?

First and foremost, I would consider the creation of the Wolfgang Laib Wax Room my lasting legacy. In regards to exhibitions: Angels Demons, and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, Dubuffet (2013) because I had a brilliant co-curator, Dorothy Kosinski; George Condo: The Way I Think (2017) because it was an extraordinary collaboration with an exceptional artist; Nordic Impressions: Art from Åland, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, 1821–2018 (2018) because it allowed me to work very closely with all of the Nordic Embassies including the Greenlandian Representation (our rich diplomatic partnerships were one of my favorite aspects of working at the Phillips) and because it enabled me to work with 19th-century and 20th-century art in one exhibition for the first time.

George Condo and Klaus Ottmann in the Phillips galleries, 2017. Photo: Rhiannon Newman

What is your favorite work in the Phillips’s collection? What is a favorite work of yours in the Phillips’s collection that our members might not know about?

The Rothko Room has always been my refuge; it is one of the most powerful installations one can experience in a museum. I discovered many wonderful artists and paintings while working at the Phillips. One of my favorite works in the collection, and probably one of the lesser well-known ones, is Louis Michel Eilshemius’s Summer Landscape with Hawk (between 1901 and 1906).

Announcement from The Phillips Collection Archive

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Phillips Manager, Archives and Library Resources Juli Folk and former Digital Assets Librarian Rachel Jacobson share the new Finding Aid for the Directorial Correspondence of Marjorie Phillips.

The Phillips Collection Archive is pleased to announce that the Finding Aid for the Directorial Correspondence of Marjorie Phillips is available online. This was one of three archival collections that was imaged as part of a stewardship grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

To learn more about archival digitization please see the latest installment of Archives 101, Expanding Research Capabilities.

This collection is particularly exciting as Marjorie Phillips often does not receive the credit her leadership deserves. Museum visitors have seen her paintings (Night Baseball is often on view) and wondered what relationship she had to the museum and to Duncan Phillips. She and Duncan Phillips established the museum and its renowned art collection together.

Painting by Marjorie Phillips (1951). Marjorie Phillips not only ran the museum from 1966-1972, she was also an accomplished painter.

The correspondence in this archival collection spans her tenure as museum director, 1966 to 1972. She is also featured in some of the letters that make up The Directorial Correspondence of Duncan Phillips (1911-1966). This archival collection was also digitized as a part of the Institute of Museum and Library Services grant.

Through the newly implemented archival information management system, ArchivesSpace, you can access a description of Marjorie Phillips and her correspondence collection and click on images to bring you to full, digital versions of the folders that make up this collection. You can browse all 9,913 Digital Objects on the system. These objects are digital representations of the folders that make up three collections in The Phillips Collection Archive. One goal of this project is to make these records more accessible and spark new curiosity about the documents, some of which are over 100 years old.

Photo taken at the retirement party for Marjorie Phillips October 18th, 1972. Marjorie stands with former employee Bill Koberg and Mike Green. In the background is her son, Laughlin Phillips, who directed the museum after Marjorie.