Posted on 10/10/2021 8:56:19 AM PDT by ameribbean expat
The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), one of the world’s finest art museums, harbors (or rather, harbored) 122 highly skilled docents, 82 active ones and 40 “school group greeters.” All are volunteers and are all unpaid. Their job is to act as guides to the Museum’s collection of 300,000 works, which they explain to both adults and schoolchildren. I’ve seen them in action at the Museum, and they’re terrific.
Despite the lack of remuneration—they do this to be helpful and because they love art—their training to be docents is extremely rigorous. First, they have to have two training sessions per week for eighteen months, and then “five years of continual research and writing to meet the criteria of 13 museum content areas” (quote from the docents’ letter to the Director of the AIC). On top of that, there’s monthly and biweekly training on new exhibits. Then there are the tours themselves, with a docent giving up to two one-hour tours per day for 18 weeks of the year and a minimum of 24 one-hour tours with adults/families. Their average length of service: 15 years.
*****
Many of the volunteers—though not all—are older white women, who have the time and resources to devote so much free labor to the Museum. But the demographics of that group weren’t appealing to the AIC, and so, in late September, the AIC fired all of them, saying they’d be replaced by smaller number of hired volunteers who will be paid $25 an hour. That group will surely meet the envisioned diversity goals.
(Excerpt) Read more at whyevolutionistrue.com ...
We used to have a membership there. It really is an amazing museum to visit.
This is disgusting.
Replacing art-loving volunteers with mercenaries is an indocent proposal.
Brilliant. They fire *all* of their volunteer docents. Now they’re scrambling around offering $25 and hour to try and find docents of the appropriate color.
Libs not only screw up everything, they’re extremely creative in their ability to find things to screw up which were not broken in the first place.
That two week courtesy rule just doesn’t exist.
When you can be fired on Monday without notice, you can call in on Monday and quit without notice.
Loyalty? Myth.
“. It really is an amazing museum to visit.
This is disgusting.”
Agree 100%.
“In the name of equality - away with you! Your skin is the wrong color!”
Liberals cannot even see how ridiculous they are.
I am an artist and I am white, Irish and Scottish descent. I show in a few galleries and I have seen how the galleries are suddenly picking artists from brown and black races, and Chinese. It’s very noticeable because the art seems not to be necessarily the first requirement, it is often not as high quality but what seems to matter is it shows a leaning toward anything of a leftist nature, particularly a city life direction of view. I’m sure it is due to funding and awards to galleries who go this direction. I have also noticed that galleries and online art shows are taking this direction.
The art world has been largely white with white owners and white artists and the left is not only pouring money into putting the brown races into them but deliberately leaving the white culture out of it. It is a very deliberate move to eliminate and change the culture as well as inviting into our country the brown races to replace the whiite race in america.
Well, at least the Art Institute of Chicago will have docent guides for the Voodoo Doll, Shrunken Head, Totem Pole, Egyptian Mummy and African Art displays.
Those are the ones that the Intellectual Elite like the most anyway.
I’ve known some volunteer docents at my local fine arts museum. And, no they’re not “diverse” as that term is currently understood. They’re typically white older ladies who are retired teachers and/or had been art-history majors in college. But so what? That’s the kind of person who (1) wants to be an unpaid docent at a fine arts museum; and (2) possesses the knowledge and educational background relevant to doing a good job as a docent at a fine arts museum.
Sure, bringing in a 20something transexual of color who dropped out of high school as a docent would strike a major blow for “diversity,” but I would question whether that young hip-hop tranny even wants the gig or is the best person to explain Hieronymus Bosch to museum visitors... verbally at least (an argument could be made that such a docent might exemplify some of the themes in Bosch’s paintings).
You have my deepest sympathy.
And dis here be the Moanin Lisa which... just a sec, I gotta take this call... Anyways as I as saying this be the Moanin Lisa who was a famous african american and painted by some dude name DaVinci who was a famous black italian painter.
LOVE the Thorne Miniature Room!
Oh I’m sure this will turn out well.
They FIRED Blue-Haired old VOLUNTEER ladies to get PURPLE HAIRED GENDER BENDERS!
I like this comment at the article by Peter N:
>> Good grief. You know what, AIC? White people are probably grossly over-represented among your donors, as well as visitors. What do you propose to do about that? Turn them away, too — that’ll work!
Those docents are just as much donors as those who give money (if not more so, since at the previous level for volunteers the standards were very strict), and the museum might just as well have “fired” monetary donors.
They FIRED Blue-Haired old VOLUNTEER ladies to get PURPLE HAIRED GENDER BENDERS!
Did that GAY guy FIRE them or was is a BOARD decision??
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