Reading list, 5 May 2018

The Baltimore Museum of Art has announced plans to sell seven works by white male artists from its collection, to create an endowment targeted at buying contemporary work by women and artists of colour. Compared to the shitshow that some recent American art deaccessioning has seemed to devolve into, the BMA's process looks immaculate and even includes donors of the works ticketed for sale heartily endorsing the idea.

It boggles my mind that there is such a thing as a "more notable startup" in the "digital art subscription space". Why anyone would invest in such a thing I don't know.

Tim Schneider takes on the blockbuster fallacy in his latest The Gray News column, building off reporting by Javier Pes on exhibitions plans at London's National Portrait Gallery and Colleen Dilenschneider's analysis of blockbuster exhibitions and visitation trends.

It is not easy to acknowledge one’s blind spots. What I had hoped would be an opportunity for public education and “truth to power” in the presentation of “Scaffold” was simply not possible because of the continuing historical trauma about an unreckoned-with colonial past. This was a humbling public admission for a person whose career has been devoted to providing a platform for underrepresented histories.

Olga Viso, ex-director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, reflects on what decolonising the museum might mean, in the wake of the Scaffold experience.