We, the undersigned, are writing this letter to summarize the When Home Won’t Let You

Stay: Art & Migration Museum as Site for Social Action (MASS Action) workgroup timeline and
process. We feel moved to make this statement and outline the full scope of the issue, as staff have
been waiting since December for Leadership Team to respond to an increasingly untenable situation.
We’re exercising our right to concerted activity, and thus collectively stand in solidarity with internal
Mia staff who have been involved with this work from the beginning, as well as external community
partners who committed time and energy to this project, only to be tokenized. We support the
recommendations for future action outlined here within.

Timeline and Process

● This group has been in discussions since October 2018 about how we could ground the
exhibition in local relevance and connections, moving away from what otherwise feels like an
“immigration biennial.” This team was selected to attend the national MASS Action
Convening, and there was an implied (though not explicit) understanding that the group would
develop approaches to address and disrupt current curatorial structures and follow through
with these approaches. This group was made up of curatorial and non-curatorial staff. The
group decided that one way to transform the exhibition in a more equitable way would be to
commission works from local artists who are taking up issues of immigration, migration,
forced displacement, and asylum.
● The initial goal of the Art & Migration MASS Action group was to ensure local artist voices
were included. The request for $21,525 to commission three local artists was denied, the
reasoning being that they would not drive attendance into the special exhibition because they
would be located outside of the show. Months later, we learn that the commissions for
Postcommodity and Ai Weiwei are totalling over $285,000. Both of these works are not inside
the special exhibition. CarryOn Homes, the only local artist commission, has been paid
$10,000 to develop the final room of the exhibition, along with programming.
● In spring of 2019, we held focus groups and listening sessions with community members.
● In July of 2019, we began having conversations around the Richard Mosse piece internally,
stemming from staff concerns (one of whom has lived experience as a refugee) about the
work’s dehumanizing effects. The group requested that it be removed from the checklist.
● Conversations around Richard Mosse continue through today and because of the energy
spent on Incoming, we were unable to discuss the issues around Postcommodity’s Let Us
Pray for the Water Between Us and its use of Dakhóta drum patterns. Though Postcommodity
identifies as Indigenous, the MASS Action group was informed that they worked with Angela
Two Stars (Dakhóta, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate) to verify the drum pattern, however, her
involvement has not been credited. It is unclear when or if she was consulted. This is another
instance of actively choosing non-local artists over local artists to tell their stories. If a Native
perspective was desired in the show, the most impactful action would have been to directly
commission Angela Two Stars or another Dakhóta artists, whom we have established
relationships with because of the curatorial process of Hearts of Our People, as well as
ongoing relationships staff in Learning Innovation have been building for years. This misstep
unravels the deeply intentional process of working with Indigenous women for Hearts of Our
People, to whom Mia owes the success of the exhibition.
● At the same time, we began assembling a Community Advisory Group to help shape the
exhibition interpretation and programming who began meeting in August. Through these
connections, we began hearing concerns about the Mosse and Ai Weiwei works, noting that
these artists profit off of other people’s suffering, and likening the harmful effects of showing
these pieces to creating a situation that would be “Mia’s Scaffold.” As a result, we had three
community advisors leave the group.
o One advisory group member felt that Ai Weiwei has made “one misstep after another”
including reenacting Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi’s death via photography, and having a
 roomful of gala-goers at the Berlin Film Festival pose in gold emergency blankets
given to refugees. She has voiced concern that “these stunts serve to trivialize
people’s very real and dire circumstances and allow the viewer to feel as if they’ve
taken some real action by the nature of their witness.” She recused herself from Mia’s
Advisory Committee
o Another advisory committee member and a longtime Mia community partner
expressed concern over Ai Weiwei’s inclusion in the exhibition and felt discomfort in
being affiliated with the exhibit as partners in the Advisory Committee and related
programming. As their organization is dedicated to caring for and humanizing
immigrants and refugees, they felt that some of the pieces in the exhibit would further
traumatize the large local refugee population and make abstract a very real lived
experience.
● In December of 2019, the curator and Leadership Team made a decision that the Mosse
piece would remain in the exhibition, ceasing further conversation and undermining the
thought work this group and community members had been doing on this topic. The reason
given to the group was that “the museum doesn’t censor artists,” however, items have been
removed from traveling exhibition checklists in previous exhibitions before they were installed
for various reasons. This group subsequently shared its concerns with this decision and wrote
a list of recommendations for steps forward that was presented at a Smart Team meeting on
December 9th. An extension of these recommendations can be found at the end of this letter.
● Throughout this entire process, staff morale has been devastatingly low, and working
conditions unbearable for many. This is an exhibition working group that has had more BIPOC
staff willing to come together and participate in tough conversations than any other workgroup
outside of Equity Team. However, the conversations we have tried to have were often met
with defensiveness, animosity and dismissal from the curator and curatorial leadership, which
communicates to all involved that our involvement has no impact. Thus, this process has
been almost entirely one of tokenization and has caused immense stress and disappointment
for many. This exhibition has several examples of using the death and trauma of BIPOC for
the sake of “art.” Processing this has been very taxing both mentally and physically on staff,
especially the staff of color that have been working on this project. At what point can we as an
institution make a stand and acknowledge that there is a difference between art that can
provoke and art that can hurt?

We feel strongly that we are at a crossroads. For the past four years, through the national
project MASS Action (Museum as Site for Social Action), Mia has been home to the largest and most
sustained conversation on equity in museums that has ever taken place in this country. We are also
the founder of the Center for Empathy in the Visual Arts, another project that places Mia as a leader in
a field-wide conversation about what it looks like to be a human-centered museum. Further, Mia has
written, and our board has approved, the Mia2021 strategic plan that places at its center the
importance of engaging the diverse communities that surround us.

However, despite these important initiatives and our articulated commitment to equity, we are
failing to effectuate this commitment, as we continue to operate largely as we have historically. We
have neglected to have the real, and difficult, conversations around what it means to shift our
practices towards equity and to truly engage, not check a box or tokenize, our community. We
continue to operate within a vise compression—caught between our mission of serving people and
the business of our bottom line.

In the past several months, we have noticed a disturbing bifurcation between staff who are
realigning their work to support greater equity, and the larger portion of museum staff who continue to
operate in status quo or fail to see how this work might impact them. The museum asks those of us
who are engaged in this work to put our personal and professional reputations on the line every day.
However, when we are asked to engage communities authentically through our strategic plan, these
words are not backed up with larger institutional action, that puts us at risk; it puts our institutional
reputation at risk, and it puts our communities’ trust in us at risk.

The left hand must begin coordinating with the right, or we cannot go further. We are asking
for Mia’s Leadership Team and our new director to take a position on whether we are ready as an
institution to move further towards equity and an authentic engagement of our communities. Either
this will necessitate some changes in our modus operandi, or we are acknowledging that the historical
ways of operating, which are rooted in exclusion and erasure, are acceptable for us. In the latter case,
this group recommends the Mia2021 strategic plan be amended and modified to reflect that Mia no
longer prioritizes engaging community. This group cannot continue to put ourselves and the
community’s trust at risk if the institution is not ready to support this direction.

Finally, we do not write this letter out of anger or out of hopelessness. We believe this institution has
the potential and capacity for growth perhaps more than any institution in this country. We know that
what we are proposing is possible because of beautiful examples like Hearts of Our People, in which
intentional integration of community input in the curatorial process has led to one of our most
successful shows to date. We know that art has the power to heal and repair. So we write this out of
hope that this letter will be received with the intention that it was written, and hope that these words
may have an impact on our future direction and commitments.

Our Recommendations

1. Stop the installation of Safe Passage and the removal of Incoming and/or keeping the
alternative and critical didactics and interpretative strategies written by the MASS
Action group. We understand that this a symbolic ask at this point, but it would go against
our values not to follow through on this in honoring the requests of our community. These
pieces have not only caused tension and harm with our external community, but also internal
staff are dismayed and psychically impacted by their impending installation.
2. Equity training across divisions with defined accountability measures. Uneven
engagement with IDEA work across the museum and an unwillingness to listen to staff of
color when they express their opinions -- often at the risk of professional relationships,
increased levels of stress, and putting at risk job safety -- has led to the current discrepancies
in stated values and actions. There needs to be a stronger and more consistent emphasis on
IDEA as an institution with constant training, support, and accountability measures to ensure
that we are working together towards the same goal.
3. An evaluation and transformation of curatorial processes in gallery rotations and
exhibitions to include community input and expertise. The institution cannot support
IDEA if the curators, the holders and communicators of cultural capital, are not willing to share
the power they are afforded with relevant communities. Building equitable oversight at the
center of curatorial processes would be the first step to keeping all museum staff accountable
to this work. What projects and what curators have actively worked with communities, both
internally and externally? Creating an evaluation process in which community participants are
asked if they felt valued and had a true impact is essential.
4. An intentional unpacking of decision-making processes and procedures. As we
continue to center equitable work through collaboration and consultation, issues of
consensus-based decision-making will come up. The institution needs to prioritize and specify
when and how decisions are made, especially when there is a cross-functional,
cross-divisional team involved. This is an antidote to power hoarding as a characteristic of
white supremacy culture.
 5. Match the $285,000 raised for two non-local artists to support community-centered
programming and art. This fund should have a steering committee comprised of Mia staff
and community partners to determine how the funds will be allocated.
6. A holistic and mediated revisioning of the strategic plan pillar “Engaging
Communities”. We cannot, in good conscience, work with community if we are not ready to
actively listen and respond to our structural positioning as an institution that holds cultural and
financial power. It puts our ongoing community relationships, trust and the repair done thus far
in jeopardy.
7. Provide support of BIPOC staff. This exhibition has devastatingly impacted the staff of color
at Mia on mental, physical, and emotional levels. There is a false notion that staff members
are not part of our “community.” If we are able to dismiss our internal communities, who have
an emotional investment in the success of Mia, what does that say about our commitment to
external community? Internal staff are also a part of external communities and can reasonably
attest that the outside community will be impacted by this exhibition. When internal BIPOC
staff say, “This hurts me,” and that is not listened to, there is a clear message that the
museum does not care about the harm caused. We ask that you work directly with Equity
Team and the BIPOC Employee Resource Group to determine how best to move forward in
supporting BIPOC staff.

Again, we would like to reiterate the hopeful energy of this letter. We are confident that by working
together, we are able to positively transform Mia to model the future world we seek to build. We would
like a response in person from Leadership Team and Katie Luber by Friday, February 21st that
addresses our recommendations on an immediate and ongoing basis.

In solidarity with the sentiments of this letter,

(In alphabetical order)

Aaron Barger
Alice Anderson
Alyssa Machida
Ana Taylor
angela olson
Anniessa Antar*
Crystal Price
Daniel Samuelson-Roberts
Diane Richard
Dianne Kramer
Donald Thomas*
Elisabeth Callihan*
Gretchen Halverson
Heather Everhart
Jason Ressler
Jeanine Pollard
Jessica Naithani
Jill Ahlberg Yohe
Jill Blumer
Joseph Doherty
Josephine Lampone
Julia Sugarman
Juline Chevalier*