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DIE is everywhere and if you aren’t DEI enough, well then you just have to DIE. Every other value, accomplishment, merit or talent, will take second billing to the only value that now matters.
It’s happening all over so this is just one story in a million of ’em.
The new director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA), whose tenures at previous institutions were punctuated by controversy, has abruptly canceled a major upcoming exhibition over a lack of diversity among the two dozen represented artists. Director Amada Cruz also eliminated the position of the museum’s longtime chief curator, Eik Kahng.
The decisions by Cruz prompted a searing response from the affected artists, who called her actions “outrageous” and “appalling” and said they continued “Cruz’s pattern of controversial leadership.”
“We consider these recent developments not only alarming but also insulting — to us, to the Santa Barbara art community, and indeed to all artists,” eight members of the group wrote in a formal letter of protest to the museum’s Board of Directors. “What is happening at SBMA now threatens the institution’s public and scholarly missions.”
In a statement to the Independent, Cruz defended her decisions. “When I joined the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in October 2023, one of the first priorities set together with the Board and senior leadership was to review the ways in which our Museum and programming can be more inclusive and more reflective of Santa Barbara County’s diverse community,” she said.
“In reviewing the exhibition plan, the checklist of around 20 living artists and estates slated to be included in the exhibition, and the catalog essays,” Cruz continued, “it was determined that it fell short from a diversity perspective. The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, like other museums of our size, has limited resources. So, it was decided to focus our resources elsewhere.”
Santa Barbara is almost entirely white and Hispanic. There’s pretty much no one else there. And while Hispanic is treated as a minority, and therefore oppressed, take a look up above at what Amada Cruz looks like. She’s a white lady born to two laywers. So are a lot of Cubans like her (not necessarily the lawyer part of that.) So are a lot of Hispanic descendants of Spanish settlers.
Cruz has done the ‘diversity’ thing everywhere she’s gone with usually unhappy results. This is nothing new for her. Staff leave, there are protests and accusations, and she claims that she’s promoting diversity.
And diversity means that somehow Amada Cruz, whose artistic accomplishments are of the bureaucratic kind, matters more than the artists because she, being a white lady from a Spanish-speaking country, is diverse, and they, being American, are not.
That’s DEI. And it’s another reminder of why DEI kills merit, accomplishment and talent while rewarding racial hucksters and grifters, many of them white.
Algorithmic Analyst says
A good piece of art should stand on its own, regardless of who the artist is.
S says
And that, in a nutshell, is why DEI is so nutty, even Forrest Gump would roll his eyes in derision.
Cassandra says
Yes this DIE thing is disgusting and totally racist, It is deliberately divisive and soon May move on to just exhibiting works by sexually confused individuals.
However, as an artist myself I can say that the proof of your work is in the buying. If these artists who are complaining about their work being rejected on racial grounds, try selling your work online or at a small gallery. Buyers do not give a fig what colour you are, only whether they like what you make. Unfortunately many of these so- called artists who are complaining, have been pampered into thinking they are important and entitled to be cosseted by wealthy public institutions. They need to get out in the real world.
David Mu says
There are a large number of artists who are going to find out just how (not) special they are in this revolution, and it will burn them to see themselves not in the parade. Maybe, the rest of us can just tell them to be thankful that some of that privilege of being removed?
Talent and only talent lasts.
BB says
Good thing she wasn’t around when that racist, white supremist, cis white male Da Vinci painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling…… That misogynist had no talent and oppressed all the POC artists who had their chance to pain with no talent, stolen from them.
Paul says
Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel
Onzeur Trante says
Good article, At first I thought this article was going to be about the museum that closed its Native American Exhibits because they were deemed offensive to Native Americans. Oh well, same nonsense, different museum.
SPURWING PLOVER says
Not Enough Obama in the Ivy Portiats or stuff from Mapplethorpe and Serano
CowboyUp says
What are these limited resources amada cruz speaks of? Art shows use admittance fees and art sales to finance themselves, and make money for the artists. What a bs excuse.
The artists, who safe money says are mostly leftists, are getting their rude awakening about socialism, which sounded so cool in theory.
David Mu says
Naturally, she removed long-time talent from the museum. DIE was the far more honest version for DEI, and these little pinks have a real talent for finding and destroying talent – as they march through the place for the revolution.
One can only wonder what shall remain after these idiots are finally removed from the profession.
Chris Shugart says
OK, let me try and unravel this: You’re the new director of an art museum. Your mission is to attract the public to attend your exhibits, as well as develop a following of supportive patrons. Putting on an art show would seem to be a good first step in that direction. But instead you cancel the exhibition for reasons that are irrelevant to your mission. Only a wokie could make that kind of absurd calculation.
“Inclusive” can be such a hollow, meaningless buzzword. If you’re running an art museum, you’d want to “include” talented artists whose works are things that the public would like to see. Of course that would be the normal rational logical approach. Again and again, wokies demonstrate their complete lack of such ordinary fundamentals.
BLSinSC says
With her previous FAILURES, why would ANYONE give her a job? Unless they were TRYING to destroy something!
She should go in to the business where she can charge rich white women to eat their food and then tell them that they don’t deserve all their riches!
FREDERICK BAUMANN says
My guess is that she’s part of the intentionally anonymous progressive network of maladroit leftists who save one another as their poisonous, shopworn Marxist ideas make them ever less attractive to ever more Americans.
I don’t believe in the nonsense that allowed WonderBread Elizabeth Warren to be hired on by Harvard as a minority instructor due to some familial folk tale about native American ancestry. I believe authentic diversity is inherent in the genesis and the history of the word ”American”!
ADLoggy says
I’m afraid, Mr. Baumann, that from your adroit analysis of the curator to your enlightened view of Harvard’s Elizabeth Warren employment to your well-formed view of America’s genesis that you have spoken over the intellectual capacity of leftists.
SPURWING PLOVER says
Already in Europe where the Climate Brats are messing up masterpieces with Soup(a terrible waste of Soup)all over this whole Global Warming/Climate Change Scam
NAVY ET1 says
DEI is it’s own reward for the woke. It’s a good thing, too…because the Santa Barbara Museum of Art will be able to bask in the glow of it’s diverse closure in the near future. Art, schmart…all that matters is the color of the artist’s skin.
ADLoggy says
Soooo, if it is an exhibit of European Renaissance Artists then you can’t have it because of DEI? What a loony bin California has become.
Mitch says
Censorship running the art world.. So many dead tyrants are smiling.
mspence says
That’s it, no art for anybody!
Edward Peitler says
When Woke artists begin to be eaten alive by their fellow Woke artists, reality won’t be far behind. Love it when leftists go after their own. Now THAT’S justice!