Readying The Museum

Welcome to the inaugural episode of the Readying The Museum podcast. Co-directors Xaviera Simmons and Miki Garcia get personal in conversation with each other about the work that has transpired over the last four years with the Readying The Museum cohort, a solutions based methodology funded by the Ford Foundation and Mellon Foundation.
Miki Garcia has served as the Director of the Arizona State University Art Museum since December 2017, having previously led the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara from 2005 to 2017. With experience at the Public Art Fund, NY, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, among others, Garcia has curated exhibitions featuring notable artists and contributed to numerous scholarly publications and panels. Her leadership at ASU focuses on using art to advance community well-being and social good. A native of Brownsville, Texas, Garcia holds degrees from Vassar College and the University of Texas at Austin. Fluent in English, Italian, and Spanish, she is dedicated to making art museums more equitable and civic-minded.
Xaviera Simmons is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose practice includes photography, performance, text, video, sound, sculpture, performance and installation. Her work explores themes of experience, memory, abstraction and empire challenging linear narratives by treating landscape as a cyclical concept. Simmons’s artistic approach is dynamic and rotating, shifting focus between various mediums throughout the year. A Bard College alumna, she has also studied at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program and The Maggie Flanigan Studio. Notable exhibitions of her work include the The Museum Of Modern Art, ICA Boston, SFMOMA, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Recognized with numerous awards including The Charles Flint Kellogg Arts and Letters Award from Bard College. Simmons has held teaching positions at Harvard, Yale and Columbia Universities. Her works are housed in major museum and private collections worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum, UBS and Deutsche Bank’s Art collections and The Agnes Gund Art Collection. Simmons has exhibitions and performances scheduled through 2026. She is pleased to be the host of the Readying The Museum podcast series alongside her fellow cohort members.

In This Episode:

• (00:00) Introduction to the podcast, backgrounds of Miki and Xaviera
• (07:58) The pandemic, protests, demands from social media, press attention
• (15:58) Diversity, inclusion, a broken system, poor museum representation
• (19:59) The pattern - Black women are the bellwether, a woman of color enters the museum sector...
• (27:04) Ideas for solutions and accountability
• (33:03) Developing the core principles of Readying The Museum
• (40:21) Accountability, museums must “do their job”
• (45:37) Naming the team members who participate, sharing our story
• (48:54) Check the website, join the community, share your experiences, check the FAQs first
• Like and subscribe to hear all of our informative upcoming episodes!

About the show:

The Readying the Museum podcast is hosted by co-director Xaviera Simmons who, alongside her fellow cohort members, delves into the evolution of this transformative project over the course of four years into the present. Each week, they share personal stories and insights about the cohort’s journey, including an authentic, behind-the-scenes look at how they are addressing accountability and systemic change in the arts and museum sectors by providing practical solutions and methodologies for artists, arts workers, boards and trustees, funders and community members. Tune in to hear an intimate exploration of their deeply personal experiences and how those experiences shape the RTM methodology.

Resources:

Readying the Museum Website

ASU Art Museum

Miki Garcia LinkedIn

About ASU Museum:
The ASU Art Museum, integral to Arizona State University (ASU), highlights the university's dedication to innovation and community impact. While ASU, recognized as the most innovative school by U.S. News & World Report for nine years, operates across multiple campuses and locations worldwide, the museum specifically focuses on art and its role in societal well-being. It serves as a teaching institution, offering interdisciplinary learning opportunities and training future arts professionals. Unlike other regional non-profit art museums, it uniquely harnesses ASU’s extensive resources to foster community engagement, integrate scholarly research with local needs, and create accessible cult...

Many museums are resistant to make the necessary changes needed for structural and systemic transformation. Museums hold deep-rooted and entrenched ideas regarding power, wealth, whiteness, patriarchy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity and worker unionization amongst many other issues.
Episode 2 of Readying The Museum features cohort member, host and artist Xaviera Simmons in conversation with cohort members Frederick Janka and Lori Fogarty on the topic of grievances. They discuss how this process of building RTM started in 2020, the work that has taken place within the cohort from different perspectives, and how RTM is a solutions based methodology, culminating place and digestive mechanism for ongoing grievances to be looked at, worked over and metabolized.
You’ll hear an examination of the critical intersection of museum operations, artist and arts worker grievances, and the systemic issues that are exacerbated during times of internal or external crisis. With museums reopening after the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline staff faced increased risks, prompting directors to avoid or attempt to address long standing demands for institutional change. The conversation addresses the layered grievances stemming from structural and labor inequities, alongside white supremacy and racial and wealth hierarchies within institutions. Highlighting the diverse perspective of individuals that make up the museum, Readying The Museum emphasizes the importance of collective work, study and support amongst all layers of the institution to prevent these grievances from becoming overwhelming. The methodology of "Readying The Museum" is introduced as a method to systematically account for and address these grievances.

Shining a light on the complexities and risks involved in articulating demands and grievances within the arts sector, Xaveria, Frederick and Lori underscore the importance of shifting accountability towards marginalized communities and viewing grievances as opportunities for systemic change. They explore the role of traditional and non-traditional arts worker unions and the necessity of working through the methodologies found within RTM to practice fostering trust and resilience through crisis and rupture.. By engaging in undoing whiteness and undoing patriarchy work alongside other important structures of hierarchy, Readying The Museum aims to create a more equitable museum environment for all.
Frederick Janka, a queer Latinx arts advocate based in Santa Barbara, CA, has nearly 20 years of experience in the contemporary art world, including roles in administration, fundraising, and curation across the US and Mexico. As the Hospitality Director for the Readying The Museum (RTM) cohort, he focuses on the wellbeing of participants and stakeholders. With a mixed heritage—his mother identifies as Chicana and his father as Central European—Frederick's journey of understanding his identity has been complex. Raised to navigate power dynamics often skewed by whiteness, he has confronted the impact of micro and macro aggressions throughout his career. His experiences growing up in Southern California and discovering Mexican Modernism have shaped his lifelong commitment to cultural advocacy, solidarity, and healing.
Lori Fogarty, Director of the Oakland Museum of California, has dedicated 35 years to various Bay Area museums. A member of the RTM cohort for nearly three years, Lori is a white, cisgender, heterosexual woman with a background shaped by her politically active working-class parents. Recognizing the advantages her white identity has afforded her in opportunities and DEIA advocacy, Lori has been critically examining the structures of whiteness in museum practices. Through RTM and personal reflection, she confronts her own conditioned fragility and the need for genuine accountability in challenging systemic white supremacy. Lori advocates for leaders to move beyond “white time,” embrace discomfort, and hold themselves accountable to real, transformative change.

In This Episode:

• (00:00) Understanding grievances around power, wealth, and systemic issues of whiteness and patriarchy, the need for transformative change
• (06:00) Note from George Scheer
• (08:00) Setting the scene - why RTM was formed during the pandemic
• (17:45) Museums that take a “neutral” stance while artists make the risky statements
• (24:06) Listening to, responding, and addressing grievances, building trust with the RTM cohort, and maintaining accountability for all aggrieved communities
• (28:19) Courage, accountability, and systemic change in addressing grievances within the arts sector rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy
• (33:52) Unveiling and reading some actual grievances - “You have to name it to tame it”
• (47:17) The role of non-traditional artist u...