Jennifer,
As you probably know, it is illegal under Calif. State law (Prop. 209) to consider race, gender etc. in any way in awarding contracts, jobs, etc. The panel may
not even be told whether someone is, or is not a racial minority, woman, etc. However, you can use other selection criteria that may be helpful in achieving equity, as we did with our Bayview Artist registry, where one of the criteria was “a meaningful
connection to the Bayview.” In their letter of interest for the registry, artists were asked to address this criteria. The panel then used this as a scoring criteria. Obviously, “meaningful connection” could be interpreted in a number of ways, but the panel
did use this as one of several scoring criteria.
It is still my experience that identifying and recruiting artists for racial and gender diversity, and having racially diverse and gender balanced panels is one of the most effective strategies. The other thing to consider is the projects themselves. If you
think about it, certain media and project approaches are heavily weighted to white men, because that is predominately who is doing, say, large abstract sculptures or technology pieces. Wall based work on the other hand, gives you a more diverse group a artists.
Susan Pontious
Civic Art Collection and Public Art Program Director
San Francisco Arts Commission
401 Van Ness Ave. #325
San Francisco, CA 94102
Direct: (415) 252-2241
FAX: 415-934-1022
Sfartscommission.org
From: public_art_network@americansforthearts.simplelists.com <public_art_network@americansforthearts.simplelists.com>
On Behalf Of Jennifer Easton
Sent: Friday, June 07, 2019 2:31 PM
To: public_art_network@americansforthearts.simplelists.com
Subject: Equity and artist selection panels
|
|
This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources. |
Hello Colleagues,
I have done a quick search of the archives and have not found this specific question - but please note, I did say quick survey, so apologies if I'm revisiting an earlier dialogue.
Have any of your programs included some sort of equity "bonus" in your artist selection as part of a strategy of program diversify? I am specifically thinking beyond artists who may be registered
minority or woman owned businesses, as we know how many artists take the time to do that.
I say "as part of a strategy" as it seems to me that a program never should rely solely on reaching equity and diversity through the final stage of artist selection. Currently we have been fortunate
in getting good diversity in the handful of projects we've done since the program has been formalized, but it's far from systematic in how it's approached.
I'd also be curious if anyone has explored this and was stymied by legal or other challenges before you were able to implement. If people feel more comfortable responding to me directly and there's
interest in the responses I will be happy to make a summary document without identifying information.
Thanks in advance,
Jennifer A. Easton
Art Program Manager
BART
510.874.7328
300 Lakeside Dr, 22nd Fl
Oakland, CA 94612
To unsubscribe from this list please go to
http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=thkLq30HqvYdEC4tOrs05muotj3958sn