Scaffold Case Study
Recalibrating the Hierarchies of Power in Art Museums
Olga Viso
Introduction
In 2017, when I was director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, I was at the center of a public art controversy surrounding the inclusion of a sculpture entitled Scaffold, 2012, in the newly renovated Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The controversy was about the placement of the artwork made by the American artist Sam Durant. Durant had been a resident artist at the Walker a decade earlier, and had produced a body of work in the intervening years that examined the complex histories of US government oppression and land theft against indigenous peoples.
Despite my (and the museum’s) best intentions to bring visibility to and awareness of a tragic and overlooked aspect of local and national history, the placement of an artwork created by a white man on unceded indigenous Dakota land that referenced a traumatic event in local native history, namely the 1862 Dakota Massacre in Mankato, Minnesota, was seen as a culturally-insensitive decision. Its inclusion was rightly received as a harmful act against local native communities, in particular the Dakota oyate (people) of ‘Mni Sóta Makoce. This is the Dakota name for the watery region now known as Minnesota, where the ancestral lands of the Dakota are located.
In the case study that follows, I share details about the controversy that surrounded Scaffold and describe the events as they unfolded in May of 2017. I focus specifically on the process of neutral mediation that I engaged in with the artist, a group of museum and city officials, and a delegation of Dakota Traditional and Spiritual elders. I share it because I found the process of mediation, a pathway proposed by Dakota elders, as a deeply instructive and valuable approach toward achieving mutual understanding and conflict resolution. Mediation offered a values-centered methodology that radically disrupted conventional hierarchies of institutional power and authority. This disruption effectively recalibrated the prevailing dynamics of institutional decision-making and authority in Minneapolis, and in my view, has had reverberating effects in art museums across the US more broadly. Indeed, since 2017, art museums have been increasingly asked to respond to a variety of ethical dilemmas and to address a range of grievances experienced by local and national communities. These grievances have focused on issues of racial and cultural discrimination, social and economic inequity, toxic philanthropy, and cultural ownership and appropriation.
I offer this account to the museum sector, not only as a pathway to resolving conflict when challenges between institutions and communities do arise, but also as a methodology with larger implications for change that go beyond the specific incident discussed here. This case study illustrates how white supremacy and capitalism operate systemically in museums and must be continually acknowledged and disrupted at every turn for real and lasting change to be realized and sustained. It also underscores the importance of museum staff, and especially museum leaders, employing a sustained and authentic practice of accountability such as the one proposed by Readying the Museum and other grassroots organizing across museum staffs across the country, such as Mass Action (Museum as Site for Social Action) https://www.museumaction.org/.
Context
The Scaffold controversy at the Walker Art Center occurred in May of 2017, in the weeks before the newly renovated Minneapolis Sculpture Garden was set to re-open. The controversy surrounded the placement of a monumental sculpture titled Scaffold, 2012, by the artist Sam Durant. It was a pre-existing work that addressed the history of capital punishment in the United States and acknowledged the US’s status as one of the few countries in the world that still implements the death penalty. The work had been presented in several cities in the Europe between 2012 and 2016, including Kassel, Germany, and The Hague, The Netherlands.
Durant conceived the sculpture as a composite of seven historical gallows drawn from US history from the 1800s to the present. It referenced a traumatic event in Minnesota history, specifically the Mankato Massacre of 1862 in which 38 Dakota men were executed by the US government marking the largest mass execution in American history. The work’s form and its placement in a public park became issues of grave concern to indigenous audiences and the Dakota people of the region, who viewed the work as a trauma trigger for native audiences. The Mankato Massacre took place just 80 miles from the site where the sculpture was placed.
Just before Memorial Day in 2017, I was alerted by a concerned staff member of the potential for public outcry. The concern had surfaced as Walker staff were in the final stages of developing interpretive materials for the public, and in particular for high school aged audiences that focused on the complex histories revealed by Durant’s sculpture. The Center’s educational team sought to proactively educate viewers about a tragic part of native Minnesota history that had only recently started being taught at public schools in the Twin Cities. The consultation with native educators and historians, which focused on questions of language, highlighted other issues of concern around the work’s reception.
After further consultation with a local native scholar, it became clear that I, as director of the Walker, had to take swift and decisive action before the garden officially opened to the public to acknowledge our institutional missteps. Within days of learning of the larger concerns, I issued a public statement of apology in which I admitted my failure and acknowledged my lack of awareness and cultural understanding in anticipating the reactions from Minnesota’s native communities. The apology, titled “Learning in Public,” was published in The Circle, a local indigenous news outlet. It was simultaneously posted on the Walker’s website https://walkerart.org/magazine/learning-in-public-an-open-letter-on-sam-durants-scaffold. In the open letter, I requested counsel from native community leaders about potential next steps for dialogue and repair. At the time, it was unclear with whom in the Dakota community the Walker should ideally consult. Was it the four tribal government leaders in the state of Minnesota, Dakota Spiritual elders in Minneapolis, or tribal representatives distributed across multiple states in the US and Canada? In seeking to understand how to best proceed with consultation, the insidious character of what the US government had perpetrated on the Dakota people became painfully clear. By executing Dakota tribal leaders and elders in 1862 and fracturing and displacing tribes across the upper Midwest and Canada, the Dakota people’s collective agency and ability to organize had been fractured, dispersed, and forever compromised.
Within 24 hours of posting the open letter, public protests erupted outside the construction fence of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Tensions mounted as protestors organized on social media and threatened to breach the grounds of the garden and burn down the sculpture. Park and City police prepared for the worst. I received calls from municipal leaders and state legislators expressing concern about the impending violence onsite and the increasing inevitability of a police action. These were outcomes the museum, state, and local officials desperately wished to avoid. Before the protestors were able to advance, the artist and museum issued a public statement expressing a desire for dialogue. A willingness to consider the artwork’s removal was conveyed. It was a key gesture that de-escalated the violence and opened the door for further discussion.
Several hours later, I was contacted by a representative of the Dakota artist community and asked if I and the museum would be willing to engage in a neutral mediation process with a group of Dakota Traditional and Spiritual elders. The elders had already been organizing around the protests at the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAP) in 2016-17. The Museum leadership and I agreed to mediation. The engagement with a neutral mediator, also involved in DAP negotiations, began almost immediately. The mediator, Stephanie Hope Smith, worked with the Dakota elders to maintain peace among the crowds outside the garden. The elders also issued a statement publicly discouraging the use of violence among the protestors. They specifically requested that white allies threatening to breach the fence in solidarity with native community respectfully stand down and recognize that this was not their fight. In a matter of hours, a structure and forum for dialogue between the Walker and key Dakota representatives was established by the mediator, who managed expectations among both parties leading up to the first formal mediation, which took place several days later.
Mediation
The mediation took the form of a daylong event at Walker. Participants included approximately fifteen representatives from the local Dakota community, six Walker staff and trustee leaders, the artist Sam Durant, and three representatives from the City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, public entities which co-managed the park with Walker. Tribal representatives and indigenous community leaders were also invited to attend.
Leading up to the mediation, the mediator and I worked closely to organize every detail of the gathering, to educate and prepare the non-native participants on Dakota customs and history, and to be mindful of appropriate protocols related to greetings and ceremony, such as allowing elders to speak without hindrance. The non-native participants were invited to a pre-meeting with the mediator and several Dakota elders to ground their understanding of the centuries long history of European oppression dating to the fifteenth century. The film Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code (2014, directed by Sheldon Peters Wolfchild, one of the participating elders) was screened for the group. Also, in advance of the formal mediation, each party was invited to articulate its list of hopes and expectations. These expected outcomes were shared and discussed with each party in advance so that all participants were fully aware of mutual goals, desired outcomes, and expectations. This procedure allowed for productive conversation to happen from the onset.
The room was laid out as a large talking circle in which elders, other tribal and community leaders, and their accompanying family members, could sit, listen, and observe the proceedings. The event began with a series of blessings, offerings of tobacco, and ritual smudging in which dried bundles of sage and sweetgrass were burned in a shell. A Dakota Medicine Man was present and walked to each individual in the circle. He waved the fragrant smoke around those in the circle to provide comfort and care to all participants and to remind everyone present of the inherent goodness in all of us.
Throughout the mediation, the neutral mediator ensured a fair process in which the concerns, values, and intents of all parties were voiced, and most importantly, processed, respected, and heard. I appreciated the attentiveness to my concerns regarding the values of free speech and artistic expression that were being called into question with the public demands to “torch” and destroy the artwork. The mediator quickly grasped how the outcome of our proceedings might be negatively received by the broader national and international art worlds. Our situation had precedent-setting potential and implications far beyond Minnesota, which the mediator ably and sensitively understood and conveyed to the Dakota elders. In voicing these concerns, it became clear that the Dakota elders did not wish to be seen as advocates of censorship. Indeed, they affirmed that preserving freedom of expression and the rights of artists in their communities was also of paramount concern.
Outcomes
The mediation took many hours of active listening, discussion, pause, reflection, reckoning, and response. Throughout the day, there were moments of pain and deep discomfort, as well as light. The result was a series of mutual agreements. These included the removal of the artwork, which was consented to by the artist and museum; the disposition of the construction materials used to erect the sculpture, which was to be determined by the Dakota; and ongoing efforts at repair by the Walker, which included a review of institutional policies and procedures and the commission of a major public art work by a native artist. In an effort of good faith and repair, Sam Durant offered to gift the intellectual property rights for the sculpture to the Dakota people. This gesture would, in principle, endow the Dakota community with the right to determine if and when the sculpture could ever be erected again. It should be noted that Scaffold is a conceptual work of art that can be re-fabricated at a future point in time using a set of instructions developed by the artist.
Beyond these tangible and measurable agreements that were publicly communicated [https://walkerart.org/magazine/agreement-reached-on-scaffold], several other important outcomes not discussed in the press should be noted:
The mediation process reset the playing field for all involved: the artist, museum, city government, and Dakota elders were given equal voice and agency in the deliberations.
The mediation centered the individuals most harmed and impacted (the Dakota) over the needs of the institutions (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis City government and the City park system).
Rather than attempt to quell the controversy and see the Dakota elders and protestors as antagonists, the museum and city representatives stepped back and lifted up the voices of those most harmed.
The institutions accepted the terms of engagement and saw the Dakota elders as essential voices of critique and accountability.
The swift arrival at mutually-agreed upon outcomes that respected all parties was recognized by state and local religious leaders as a new model that moved forward a conversation with native communities in Minnesota in ways that religious organizations and government entities had not been able to materially advance in 150 years.
Challenges
In the weeks and months that followed the mediation and healing ceremony at the Walker, which took place several days later, individuals within the institution began to second-guess the museum’s decision making, especially as members of the international media and constituents outside the organization began to question the speed with which the art work had been removed. The consensus and mutual determinations arrived collectively during mediation quickly began to dissolve as further questions arose. Should the work have remained on view longer, some wondered, allowing the Center time to host a period of communal discussion and debate? Others worried the swift removal constituted an act of artistic censorship by the museum. This was despite the artist's insistence and my contention to the contrary, that Scaffold was a conceptual work of art that could be altered by the artist, re-fabricated anew, or completely reconceived by the artist in dialogue with Dakota communities.
Since the sculpture was sited, on public property, there were further questions about the appropriateness of the work for the context, and the role and authority of the city and state in overseeing and arbitrating the matter. Still, others questioned the function of the Walker’s Board in deciding the work’s future. Why, some insisted, did the decision rest in the hands of a few board leaders involved in the mediation? And why did the artist and director have such a strong say in the outcome? Didn't Walker's ownership of the art work grant the museum greater authority? Didn’t the director work at the pleasure and behest of the Board? If so, then why were these decisions not put to a collective vote by the museum’s governing body?
As internal and external debates mounted, the more equitable proposition of shared cultural stewardship forged during mediation began to give way to traditional museum hierarchies of power and debates about institutional property and ownership. The artistic intent and conceptual integrity of the art work, which both I and the Dakota elders labored to preserve during mediation, was quickly reduced to an asset, one subject to institutional fiscal oversight. Notions of individual and artistic agency and ethics fractured as institutional structures of authority were reinscribed and reasserted. Despite my efforts to hold a more level playing field, it became clear that I had lost institutional voice and agency. Within six months I left the organization and the Walker began its search for a new leader.
Personal Reflections
In hindsight, there is no question that I could have (and should have) better anticipated the impacts of Scaffold on local indigenous communities. If I had practiced a methodology of accountability that was community-led and -centered rather than upheld the corporate model of accountability that is the norm at most US cultural institutions, I would have been more culturally sensitive. And, if I had concerned and educated myself appropriately in local native histories and centered the needs of the Dakota people, in the first place, I would have recognized that I should have consulted earlier with indigenous historians and community leaders. I further acknowledge that if I had cultivated a more diverse staff and board with greater indigenous representation, I would have recognized sooner the potential harms the art work would cause in Minnesota.
The events around Scaffold, both before and after mediation, palpably illustrate how the museum model continues to operate under colonial, white supremacist, and capitalist systems. Racism and inequity remain structurally inscribed at virtually every level of museums across the US and elsewhere and must be continuously challenged and recalibrated to shift the hierarchies of power and sustain the slow but positive advances made.
I do believe a different path was forged in the resolution of Scaffold during the mediation process with the Dakota elders. The recalibration of institutional power and inherited hierarchies was a hallmark of the process. An alternative way was modeled to respond artistically and institutionally in which all parties had sustained voice and agency. While the new level playing field may not have been sustained in the long term, I do believe the outcome changed hearts and minds, as well as institutional practices. It is a case study that remains instructive for the entire museum sector. It argues for the urgent need to build individual and institutional readiness and humility and to establish new authentic frameworks of community-centered accountability such as those put forth by Readying the Museum. These practices are essential to undoing white supremacy in museums.
You can read more about the events surrounding Scaffold here:
