I Need A Museum...

From the outside looking in at the Carnegie Museum of Art, a series of tall white banners makes an emphatic call for the transformation of the museum as we know it. Andrea Geyer’s “Manifest” exhibit is displayed in the museum’s glass entryway, visible to both the outdoor sculpture court and the wide interior entrance stairs. On the banners, Geyer lists her wants, her needs, and her demands of what a museum should be, and in doing so, calls attention to what it often is not. It’s a call for action that is as plain and bold as its display. No frills, no room for (mis)interpretation, no chance to miss it. I contemplate (and support) Geyer's vision before my visit, while I am at the museum in the space with her work, and in the days following as I struggle to shape and manifest my response to it into a cohesive written work.  Do I call into question whether the Carnegie Museum of Art is honoring Geyer's call for transformation? Do I critique the display as merely performative? Do I offer a hopeful vision of what could be, joining my voice with Geyer's to move our legacy art institutions into the future?

And then the world shifts, and I realize: whether CMoA is doing enough to respond to "Manifest" is not the question. The question is wider, deeper, with a bigger breadth than that.

The CMoA's website tells us that "Manifest" arose out of Geyer's research into Grace McCann Morley, founding director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art who served in that role from 1935 to 1958. Morley's vision for the museum, which still feels progressive 70 years later, included a public art library, a television program called "Art in Your Life," and operating hours until 10:00 PM, to name just a few perks. But another influence on "Manifest" came in 2016, when the results of the US presidential election pushed Geyer to include calls for museums "to be sites of sanctuary and resistance."

As I revise this writing in early November of 2024, so too does another presidential election influence the context surrounding "Manifest."

I stop struggling with questions of how to properly critique the Carnegie Museum of Art's engagement with "Manifest," and whether the vision of its own future is in harmony with Geyer's words. I struggle instead with any vision of the future at all.

I start doomscrolling on social media, because it's somehow comforting to know we're all in discomfort together. I start seeing people and organizations – mostly artists and art spaces – offering open doors: free admission to normally-paid events, Invitations to simply come and be together, to mourn, to distract, to laugh, to plan. I see plans for rest and mutual aid and organized resistance. I see the word "community" pop up more times in a day than I've seen it in months combined. I see movement that is tangible and not performative. I see a mass understanding of what is needed in this moment, and a rise to an unspoken bid for action, however small that action may be. I see what Geyer is calling for in "Manifest" happening in real time, and I stop grappling with questions of whether or not the Carnegie Museum is responding properly to her work, because at this moment, that question doesn't matter: we already are responding, elsewhere, outside the museum walls.

This moment will require the kind of radical action that "Manifest" calls for. We will need spaces of refuge, resistance, and sanctuary. We will need community to support us, for our physical and political needs, yes – but also for our spiritual and mental needs. We will need space to breathe. We will need space to find joy and beauty. We will need spaces to rest from the fight, or to prepare to return to it. Our creative spaces, already so accustomed to welcoming the outcasts and overcoming adversity, are perfectly poised to rise to this occasion. They are already doing so. They have been some of my only comforts in the days since the election results became clear. I have every reason to believe they will continue to be in the days ahead.

All of this has shifted my view on "Manifest," and the context of what the museum could be. I think that Geyer's museum exists, or is in the process of coming into existence, right now – but it's not in our legacy institutions. It's in the little art gallery with the rickety stairs leading up to it. It's in the tattoo shops with the progress pride flag in the windows and the familial atmosphere inside. It's in the community gardens and the oddity shops and the tiny rundown music venues. And what a beautifully appropriate manifestation of what Geyer envisions in her work this is. What she's asking for is progressive and wide-ranging. It's bold and varied, with demands for places of peace and places of disruption, a space for abstract dreaming and a space for concrete action. The text of "Manifest" is vast enough in its demands that no two museums displaying the work offer the same collection of words. And so it is in this guerilla-style museum I see developing all around us in the aftermath of the election. Every creative space can offer the things Geyer demands, but no two places will do it in the same way. In one place you might be organizing politically, while in another you may be giving yourself and your community space to create and unwind from the rising tension. And in a third space you might find art that blends the two together.

"Manifest" is a tall order. It's a bold demand and a big dream to ask of any entity, and I applaud Andrea Geyer for doing it, especially because it directly confronts large arts institutions that are often too entrenched in their ways and the business of it all to fully respond in the way she implores them to. It's not that I think museums, in this case the Carnegie Museum of Art, can't meet Geyer's demands. It's just that that's simply not up to me to decide. It's up to the CMoA, and any museum that displays "Manifest" on its walls, to decide if they will take the projects words to heart. Until they do, and even if they don't, I still see Geyer's words becoming a tangible reality around me. Small, independent artists and art spaces are doing important work, work that soothes our souls and liberates ourselves amidst political adversity. With the words of "Manifest" hanging in their windows, the Carnegie Museum of Art has an open invitation to join us. I want them to join us. I need them to join us. I demand that they join us. Because it is going to take all of us to ensure that the kind of space Geyer imagines can come into existence, and then continue to exist. It is going to take all of us to manifest it.