Werbel
6.7 Tenure for museum professionals, union membership and representation, and endowed funding untouchable by meddlesome politicians, are the best ways to strengthen freedom of artistic expression. In the real world, money matters, and few museum professionals can afford to lose their job, or even worse go out under a cloud of angry denunciations that makes getting a new job less probable. Self-censorship is unquestionably more likely if someone fears losing their livelihood, which is why it should come as no surprise that a clear finding of the survey was that having some job protection significantly (p < 0.05) reduced the likelihood that an institution had placed constraints on the exhibition of art in the past, as compared to no job protection. Being protected meant that decisionmakers also were less likely (p < 0.01) to report “significant” or even “rare” limitations in their perception of freedom of artistic expression. Several research participants elaborated on the ways that job protections gave them confidence in the same manner that faculty members with these protections have their academic freedom strengthened: I just think about [my old job at a private liberal arts college], for example, where 100% of my funding came directly from the college, right? If anything happens, if there’s some issue there with that relationship, what do I do? I can’t pay for my staff. I can’t do anything. I’m a little more of this quasi freestanding entity here because we have such a significant endowment that directly supports what we do in addition to annual fund and membership and all this kind of stuff.
My official on-record job description, [states] that I have creative control over the contents of the exhibitions. Part of what I feel has really helped secure our creative freedom over here is my boss and I just recently were able to get my position endowed. If you have the support of major donors to the university. That always makes them happy. And a survey respondent in the open forum shared: I have actually been surprised by the level of support and freedom I experience at my institution. I am protected by tenure and a union, and at our institution curatorial work is considered my research and protected by a robust collective bargaining agreement. I have never had to rely or reference this, however, even when curating exhibitions about topics such as reproductive justice, climate change, civil rights, and Indigenous autonomy. I believe that our policy of tenuring curators and classifying our work as research is foundational to the culture of freedom. If the big money funders of “free speech in higher education” campaigns really want to make a difference, they should spend their money on unrestricted endowments instead of larding campuses with agitation, legislation, and litigation.
51
