Dear senior staff of MoMA,
My name is Aneth Naranjo and I’m currently a freshman at John Jay College. More than being a college student, I’m a Latina living in the United States. Living in this country, it’s difficult to find representation of my community in cultural institutions, especially in positions of authority within cultural institutions. In the recent years, institutions have been more aware and have made a bigger effort to diversify and integrate their staff so it’s representative of our culturally diverse country. It has come to my attention that your senior staff, and staff in general, are predominantly white. While I’m sure that each employee has earned their spot, I would also like to challenge you to build a more diverse staff. There are many museums that lack a diverse and integrated staff, but I picked this museum because MoMA because currently you’re very influential to to a very big and diverse audience. According to a report from the Themed Entertainment Index, in 2016, MoMA was the seventh most visited museum in North America with 2.8 million visitors. These visitors come from all different kinds of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. When you’re serving a wide and diverse audience like you are, it’s important to have a staff that is representative of your audience for several reasons.
Speaking from experience, being a person of color and seeing that almost everyone in an authoritative position is white is discouraging as a young kid. It feels like you can’t ever get there because you don’t look like the people in those positions. This is why a culturally diverse staff is important. We should want all kids, no matter their ethnic and cultural background, to aspire to be whatever they want. We shouldn’t set up barriers by not making an effort to diversify and integrate all staffs in all cultural institutions. We should lead by example and show all kids, especially kids of color, that they are free to aspire to be anything in life, like the director of a museum.
When you have a diverse staff, you are also able to serve your audience more effectively. There are certain experiences that people from certain backgrounds experience. If you have people in your staff that are able to connect with your audience about specific experiences then you will be able to display art that speaks to these experiences and your audience. People’s visit to the MoMA will become more personal and profound if they find something that speaks to their personal experiences. I can personally tell you that my favorite work of art at the MoMA is Frida Kahlo’s painting titled My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree). Apart from the reason that Frida Kahlo is an amazing artist, the reason why this is my favorite work of art at the MoMA is because I am able to connect with it. Her family resembles my family and I am able to see myself in her painting. I know that your staff works hard to display art that is able to connect to a diverse audience with all types of life experiences, and I think that you could do this more effectively if your staff was more diverse.
Thank You,
Aneth Naranjo
Dear Museum of Modern Art officers and trustees,
To begin, I would like to thank the staff and board for consistently working towards making the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) the cornerstone of modern art in the world, with an ever changing collection of contemporary art. The museums are such an amazing resource that everyone should try to utilize it, and being in the backyard for New York City inhabitants, it is nothing short of a necessity for the cultural improvement of our residents. Above all, students really do need adequate involvement with the arts as they grow, to help broaden their perspectives, and introduce concepts not typically discussed in the classroom setting. Art has been shown to improve the motor skills, problem solving capabilities, language based skills, but most importantly, it is a part of our culture. It allows for the link between ethnicities, cultures, religions, economic classes, and connects us as humans. Sadly, school curriculums have been slowly chipping away at the involvement of fine arts education over the past few decades. The arts cannot be learned through occasional or random exposure any more than math or science can. This belief of the further integration of arts into the lifestyles of students would hope to further open up the MoMA for the youth of New York to fully appreciate.
The current pricing and hour situation does have a lot of inclusive factors. The free Uniqlo sponsored hours every Friday, from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM if a great way to remove the financial barrier barring some from accessing the Museum. The fluctuating price points, pictured below in the table, are very accommodating to the different age groups and the assumed correlated income ranges at the given ranges. Along with this, the current free admission at all times for the MoMA PS1 in Queens, courtesy of the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, is yet another crucial step the MoMA has taken to open their doors.
Location / Pricing
Group
The Museum of Modern Art
(Manhattan)
MoMA PS1
(Long Island City)
Students
(w/ Full time Student ID)
$14
FREE
Seniors
(65 or over with ID)
$18
FREE
Children
(16 years and under)
FREE
FREE
Adults
$25
FREE
While the museum already takes strong steps at pricing and hours, I would hope for some more developments. A majority of the daily hours are from 10:30 AM to 5:30 PM, excluding holidays and Fridays; which is open from 10:30 AM to 8:00 PM. The Friday scheduling certainly helps make time for many residents to visit, but the other non flexible weekday hours make it difficult; to impossible, for some groups to properly visit the facilities. For students in the elementary to high school years, the school day begins in the early morning, from approximately 6 to 7 AM, and ends from 2 to 3 PM on the weekdays. For students in the periphery of both locations, the commute time mitigates ample time for potential visitors to enjoy and absorb the museum’s works. The timing also conflicts with prospective extracurriculars students may adopt after school, and is an unfair sacrifice for anyone to make. The free hours from 4 to 8 PM every Friday, while a good step forward, are still slim both hour wise and day wise. Most older students work Fridays after school due to having a weekend following their shifts. The Uniqlo free night also results in substantial lineups beforehand, again taking away from enjoying time inside the museum. As the MoMA website even states, “To avoid long lines, visitors are strongly encouraged to arrive after 6:00 p.m.”, to limit guests to only two hours in a visit, is a disservice to the contents of the museum. I have attended the Uniqlo free nights just to witness the actual density of the museum on such occasions, and it is no exaggeration to claim that the volume of people detracts from the overall enjoyment of the exhibits. Free tickets were released from only one entrance, and a line hundreds deep quickly formed along 53rd street as people waited their turn to enter. The largest issue the free night exemplifies is how abundantly crowded the museum can reach. Friday is a tough night to run these styles of promotions as while the largest amount of people will be available to partake in it, it is also a normally abundantly crowded day. Combing the large groups of people that are there for the free night, and those there simply because they are free on Friday night, creates a perfect storm of crampedness. While moving between the exhibits, it is hard to appreciate and absorb the art while there are thousands of others moving around you; creating an innate sense of urgency. The claustrophobic status the museum reaches in these moments severely dampens one’s ability to browse and absorb the curations.
Finally, the free admission offered at the MoMA PS1 has an unintended deterrents. The current layout for the PS1 admission fee page has the suggested donation amounts presented in the same format as the Manhattan locations fees are shown. Thus, it can lead to some confusion from those navigating the site for information, and the assumed price of PS1 may push some away. The location is also far removed from the normally traversed areas in New York City, and presents a commuting challenge to potential suitors. While the Museum in Manhattan is located on 53rd Street, between 6th and 5th Avenue, PS1 is far off in Queens, and is hard for more casual visitors to justify commuting to.
The Museum of Modern Art will continue to be a staple for contemporary art, and will maintain the current strong levels of traffic. The free entry you offer to CUNY students is a blessing, and has significantly increased my visitation to the museum. I do appreciate all the steps you have taken to be more accommodating, and these thoughts are simply my small anecdote. This letter hopes to simply open up the discussion of tweaking the current system to be more accommodating the the student class living in NYC. While there may be an initial lack of response from younger generations, which may be seen as a failure for change to reap positive rewards, this initiative should be seen as a process to ingrain an appreciation for the arts from a young age. By adapting the hours to stretch later into the evenings, and incentivizing events to a younger audience, through medium or admission fees, the MoMA can be at the forefront of elevating the cultural awareness of New York. While the in sacrifice of returns in the short run may present itself as a deterrent, by pushing for more accommodating criterion for entry, we can hopefully secure the future of the fine arts for years to come.
Best,
Edison Sears