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Taking over museums may seem like small stuff compared to taking over a country, but the Left is fighting a broad front multi-spectrum war of the kind that conservatives have yet to adapt to or even envision.
And there are multiple angles in its latest plot.
Three major foundations and one philanthropic organization—the Alice L. Walton Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and Pilot House Philanthropy—have banded together to create a new initiative that will aim to diversify leadership positions at several art museums across the country.
With a commitment of $11 million over the next five years, the Leadership in Art Museums (LAM) initiative will aim to increase racial equity in leadership positions across museum departments, ranging from curatorial and conservation to education and community engagement.
Anytime the Left says “diversify”, translate it as “leftist takeover under the guise of identity politics”. While museum leadership positions are often filled by liberals, that’s not always the case, and the radicals would like to clean out even the liberals and replace them with their handpicked activists.
Obviously controlling museums is helpful from a culture war angle.
But we also should not forget that the Left’s hijacking of the Ford Foundation was one of the crucial moments that paved the way for the downfall of the United States long, long before Soros even moved to America.
Since then there’s been a whole lot of hijacked foundations whose vast cash reserves were used to build the vast power of the Left. Some museums have money, they also have classical art and artifacts and there’s a deaccession trend underway to dump classical works to fund the purchases of woke identity politics garbage.
When the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) announced in April it was rolling back restrictions on the sale of deaccessioned works, it seemed to be offering a boon for museums whose revenue was drying up—and doubly so for institutions looking to add greater diversity to their collections amid renewed calls to address systemic racism. But as the controversy over the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA)’s recently postponed sale of deaccessioned works by Clyfford Still, Andy Warhol, and Brice Marden illustrates, the practice is far from accepted even in times of existential crisis. As the pandemic drags on, funds become even more scarce, and calls for diversity ring ever louder, why is deaccessioning still such a hot-button topic?
That’s a 2020 article. Decassession is still going on with the Whitney shedding some Edward Hopper paintings, but there’s been resistance and a sizable backlash.
Is the Ford Foundation plotting a sizable takeover here? Invest $11 million in the right places and the Left could have the inside track on a massive purge of classical art.
Yet another step on the long march through our institutions, as recommended by Italian communist Antonio Gramsci in his prison notebooks. The Frankfurt School was paying attention.
There was a professor at the Notre Dame University who was a Marxist and big fan of Gramsci (who, himself, was a big fan of Lenin).. He translated Gramsci’s prison diaries into English and established a foundation to propagate his views. His name was Joseph Buttigieg. He was the father of our Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg. Fancy that.
Like Father, Like Son 🙂
Was he a butt pirate like his unqualified and incompetent son? Buttgig is the white Obama.
Thanks Daniel, that seems to be 100% on target.
Reminded me of how the Nazis tried to control art in Germany during the 1930s.
The Philistines are taking over.
With the Nazis, I believe that was just plain looting.
so is so e of this behavior. Trust that the elites will have masterpieces hanging in their mansions.
More like the Cultural holocaust in China & for the same reason. Destroy a nation’s history & you detroy the nation & can remake it as you please.
It’s only a matter of time before we have or own “degenerate” art exhibition forced on us.
And of course, the lefties will continue with racist art like the Nazis did.
Unfortunately that has already happened in England, our top museum the British Museum, started with a joke exhibition on islame and then sent the original Cyrus Seal back to Iran to the mullahs.
A small but very renowned gallery in Cambridge, Kettles Yard, full of incredible 20th century English art in an 18th century house setting, decided it would be “equitable to have a muzz female clad head to toe in black, to be their spokesperson. I sent them a message asking where was the connection, no answer of course. Sickening and disturbing.
All they want is an eraser applied to the parchment of history.
That’s all.
Adapt or gulag as they say in mother Russia. Only this time there’s no US to provide contrast or promote Perestroika.
Remove the classics art and replace it with obsince pornographic modern art
The Maoists are big on co-opting art
This process is already well underway at too many once prestigious American museums
Read the excellent “When Race Trumps Merit” by Heather MacDonald. She has an entire section on the Left’s destruction and repurposing of the arts in the name of “DEI.” It will enrage you or make you sick, or both.
Is there anything the Left doesn’t see fit to “repurpose”? Thank you for pointing out theMacDonald article.
Thanks for the reminder. I love her books.
Good article. It’s a given that the Left will take over museums, starting with University Art Museums, and then the contagion will spread. All those deaccessioned works will likely end up in the hands of the Leftist elite, how ironic.
The more they do this, the more it just makes people (at least the intelligent ones) more interested in classical art. But please study Greece, Rome and Florence on your own. Don’t always assume some professor knows more than you do. In many cases these professors are pushing their own agendas.