Anyone with some tread on their tires who’s been fired by email can recognize the protocol. The writer blathers on about your years of dedication to your job, their gratitude for all you have done for all this time, and then hits you with some self-justifying jargon: the need to “update systems,” maybe, or the need to “rebuild” or “better serve” someone or some group. These days, perhaps even in the name of “equity” or “inclusion.”
By then you know what’s coming after all the disingenuous paragraphs: You’re canned, most likely in favor of a newer model.
Just such a weaselly letter was sent out Sept. 3 by Veronica Stein, the Woman’s Board executive director of learning and engagement at the Art Institute of Chicago. The recipients were the museum’s 150 or so volunteer docents, a beloved mainstay of the venerable cultural institution for decades and the main providers of fine, learned tours to Chicagoans, tourists, students from Chicago Public Schools and myriad other visitors to our great museum.
Once you cut through the blather, the letter basically said the museum had looked critically at its corps of docents, a group dominated by mostly (but not entirely) white, retired women with some time to spare, and found them wanting as a demographic.
No matter that the docents had typically trained for years, if not decades, on how to describe the Art Institute’s collection, or worked hard on adjusting to the trendy new ways (“Art and Activism”) of describing the work to be found there, or put in hour after hour in academic study of their fields.
Thus the museum had decided to can the whole lot of them, replacing the group with a small number of paid educators working longer hours.
Don’t forget to pick up your things, it said, among other pleasantries. Feel free to meet on your own, it allowed, although we won’t be able to support you. And would you like a free membership? Initially, the museum even put an expiration date on that, before backing down after the docents expressed their deep sadness at such shabby treatment after all their years of service.
And, let’s be honest, all their donations of time and money. Look at Stein’s own title. She is the Woman’s Board executive director of learning and engagement. Volunteers pay her freight.
Frankly, the museum would certainly have had a tough lawsuit on its hands for age and race discrimination (there were laws against that, last time we checked) were it not for one thing: Everyone being nixed was a volunteer. And, as at least one docent found out after contacting the AARP, volunteers are not covered by federal employment laws. We’ll wager museum lawyers had pointed that out.
Volunteers are out of fashion in progressive circles, where they tend to be dismissed as rich white people with time on their hands, outmoded ways of thinking and walking impediments to equity and inclusion. Meaningful change, it is often said, now demands they be replaced with paid employees. In this case, the clear implication is that such employees will be more amenable to how some of the lefty cultural apparatchiks at this great museum now insist their works be described.
This is an absurdly reductive view of volunteering. The museum docents came from all walks of life and by no means were all of them either white or wealthy. Most of them long have seen themselves as liberals and progressive thinkers, arts lovers who have found their calling later in life and are fully aware of some of the things that have to change in museums. They just thought it would not have to be them.
Many of them likely have stayed up late at night getting themselves up to speed on what the museum expects from them now with its Art and Activism tours. They couldn’t change what they looked like, of course, nor could they knock years off their lives, nor could they reduce the size of their bank accounts, typically the result of careful saving to allow for a fulfilling retirement. Plenty of them took the CTA to the museum.
We think this was a callous move in a cruel time in America. We get the appeal of ripping off the Band-Aid, but the resultant optics, not to mention the human cost of supporters feeling devalued, clearly was not fully considered.
Why not invest some time in recruiting new, diverse docents? Why not grow the corps in such a way that it’s refreshed? Why not help docents who need help with expenses or child care? Why not have a hybrid model, at least until the current docents exit?
And, above all, instead of trashing volunteerism as inherently elitist, why not avow and attest to its ongoing value as a vital part of necessary diversification and cultural change?
We know hardworking Chicagoans of all races who toil for a living for 40 hours a week, or more, and still spend nights and weekends in service to their communities and their city. Many of them say they get far more out of their service than those they are serving. Exactly.
Furthermore, retirees can describe works of art with the benefit of experience: They are more likely to know pain, loss and the chaos of change. All themes in the museum’s collections; all insights valuable to students. We like our tour guides to know something of life.
We hear the docents, hardly a radical group of agitators, have requested a meeting with the president of the Art Institute, James Rondeau, who should at least have signed the initial letter himself. This was a vulnerable group in today’s progressive power structure and he didn’t protect them or what they love to do.
He should meet with them, apologize and find some kind of compromise that does not involve the spectacle of long-serving devotees of a great museum left to feel like they’ve been put out with the gift-store trash.
Join the discussion on Twitter @chitribopinions and on Facebook.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
