 Good evening, welcome everybody. And hello to everybody tuning in from home. Thanks for coming. My name's Martha Lucy. I am deputy director for research, interpretation, and education here at the Barnes. So this is the final program in our series, the Barnes then and now. And in celebration of our centennial, we've been reflecting on different aspects of the Barnes that were central to our founders mission in 1922. And we've been asking, how do these things show up in our work now? Tonight's focus is social justice. I'm not sure that Albert Barnes ever used the phrase social justice. But the idea of a more equal distribution of opportunities within society was central to his motivations for establishing the Barnes Foundation. He described the Barnes Foundation as a place for quote, the plain people. That is men and women who gained their livelihood by daily toil in shops, factories, schools, and stores. His educational approach was modeled on the egalitarian theories of John Dewey. Barnes believed passionately in racial equality. He championed black writers, artists, and musicians. And he railed against the evils of racism in 1925, writing with some optimism. Our unjust oppression has been powerless to prevent the black man from realizing the expression of his own rare gifts. Barnes was not perfect and we certainly don't wanna position him as some sort of white savior. But we are proud of the egalitarian beliefs at the core of this institution. Beliefs that formed the very reason for its existence. And we work hard to make sure that they are reflected today in what we do. So, to our question, how does the Barnes carry out its mission of social justice in 2022? Certainly the idea of what counts as just has changed since Barnes's time. More broadly, and I ask this like to be deliberately provocative, what responsibilities should museums and other cultural organizations have in this fight? Can we really hope to create a more just society through art? Our participants tonight are two extremely dynamic leaders in Philadelphia's arts and culture sector. In the middle is Jane Golden. Jane is the director of mural arts, Philadelphia, and a veritable force of nature. It's true. Since 1984, she has overseen the growth of mural arts from a small city agency into the nation's largest public art program. They've created over 4,000 works of public art through community engagement. Working with partners throughout the city and probably beyond the city. Yes, around the world. Yes, around the world. You knew that, that was, did not sound right. She has developed groundbreaking programs that harness the power of art to transform practices and policies related to youth education, restorative justice, environmental justice, and behavioral health. And the Barnes has been one of mural arts' partners, and you'll hear more about that tonight. My wonderful colleague, Val Gay, sitting here on the right, is deputy director for audience engagement and chief experience officer at the Barnes. And what that means is that she oversees public and community programs and the guest and protection services team, and she works to grow and sustain the Barnes' relationship with audiences in the Philadelphia region. So that is no small task. Val has a very important job and she has spearheaded some super exciting initiatives since she's been at the Barnes. And it has been just, frankly, exciting to watch her whole team and her division evolve under her leadership. Val also happens to be an amazing opera singer. She's just one of those multi-talented humans. I think all of these women are multi-talented. Our moderator, Roxanne Patel-Shepilavi, is executive editor and co-executive editor of the Philadelphia Citizen. Philadelphia Citizen is a nonprofit media organization whose mission is to actively reignite citizenship in Philly and to provide excellent journalism that emphasizes solutions to problems. So if you have not checked out the Philadelphia Citizen, make sure that you do it. It's, I think it's sort of vital to any kind of sort of social political discussion in the city. Roxanne is a journalist herself and you can read her important article on, I mean, she has many articles, but one right now is on the homepage about solutions to ending gun violence after yesterday's shooting. I am very grateful for the three of you being here tonight. I'm excited to hear the conversation, so take it away. We'll wait for you. Thank you, Martha, for hobbling onto the stage and introducing us. So this is an exciting conversation that gets to the heart of so much and I'm excited that it's the last and clearly best of all the conversations that have happened here at the Barnes the last several weeks. And it gets to the, I think it gets to so many of the important issues of our time, starting with Dr. Barnes' mission, a larger project of social justice here and in America, the power of art to, as Meryl Art puts it, ignite change. And we're all really fortunate to be able to talk with these amazing women about this. So thank you both. Thank you all for being here. I'm gonna ask some questions to Jane and Val and then we'll open it up to questions from the audience, assuming that you guys have some. If not, I think we can fill the time, certainly. So let's get started. So Val, I wanted to, Martha touched on this a little bit but I'm hoping that you could give us a little bit of background on Dr. Barnes and social justice, which, you know, or whatever his version of that was. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure, so hi everyone. I'm so glad you're here. But I have to say, even if you weren't here, Jane and I were gonna have a great time. And I just have to say, first of all, I'm just really grateful to my colleague, Martha, to the Barnes and my other colleagues. I see Bill Perthes here, who's a part of the series. And just the fact that we get to talk about this as we celebrate our centennial. The centennial of the actual charter for Dr. Barnes. So there are two different things, right? So, you know, you start one thing and then you may open it later. So the centennial of our charter, it's so important, as I understand it. And I say this with a little shakiness because my colleagues, my esteemed colleagues, are in the audience. And so if at any moment I say anything that is not factually correct, just lift your finger and correct me please. Okay, thank you, because this is how I tell everybody. So imagine is 1908 and Dr. Barnes is in West Philadelphia at 40th and Filbert in his factory. And it's a small factory, about 20 folks or so. But in his factory, first of all, he hired black men and white women to work in the same place. First, that's progressive for that time, especially when there were parts of the country where that would have been illegal, right? And that miscellaneous laws were so rapid and so strong and stringent that that was first the, that was a real act of defiance, if you will. Secondly, that Dr. Barnes, we are in Philadelphia, we are a working class town. Anyone who's been here any period of time know that we are, you know, we have our eds and meds, but we are at our core, a blue collar town with lots of factories everywhere. So imagine a factory at a time before really the, or as the labor movement was really starting to get started, that you had a person, an employer, who paid a living wage, who paid for eight hours a day for their work. But as I recall, and I don't know, this quote is not exactly right, but it was something like paying, someone working eight hours a day is stupid. So he paid them for eight hours a day, but they only worked for six hours a day. And two of those hours they spent. Discussing art, looking at art, and discussing philosophy. And you know, when you talk about John Dewey and the concept of the democratization of education, that is a progressive idea at a time. It gets better because Dr. Barnes actually disaggregated intelligence from education, which, sir, sir, what's your name? Mark. Mark, okay, Mark is 1908, you're a black man in Philadelphia, you're working in my factory, I'm Dr. Barnes, you're working in my factory, I'm gonna make a couple assumptions about you. I'm gonna make an assumption that you are undereducated. But you know what, Mark? You're not off the hook, because you have a brain you can think. And so Mary, who I've hired, Mary Mullen, my first instructor, will read to you what these are. Everybody else, anyone that can read will read it, but she'll read it to you. And you know, I know you're undereducated, but since you have a brain and you may be illiterate, you still have a brain and you have a tongue, and so you can speak and you can think, you're gonna tell Mary what you think about what she just read. And so in our archives, we have these handwritten assignments, same hand by Mary of these men particularly. That is progressive, right? And so when you think about all the things that we hear about him, about art, and about him being cantankerous, and all those other things and contentious, and he was, and he's not perfect, right? That those acts inspire me and to think about 21st century, what are the 21st century act of that? It's not, and it was very recent that we even thought that babies couldn't think, for example, right? It is not that far along that people didn't think that people of color, that people who are uneducated could actually not only think, but have agency over their thinking. And so to me, all the things, or many of the things that we're doing today, particularly as it evolves around social justice, goes back to those roots. And the thing I love the most is that someone early on, I think it was our former registrar, said, he'd be known to be dragging now priceless works of art onto the factory floor. That is just awesome. Totally. Well, and what's great about, when we talk about the through line, of course, is that you guys are basically doing the same thing now, right? Talking about art with all sorts of different people. And I know you do a lot of that, which I'll get to, but Jane, let me ask you a little bit about, and I think we actually have some slides for this. The history of mural arts and Barnes' relationship, Barnes Foundation's relationship, and kind of how you see your missions aligned. Well, it's really interesting, because this is the site of the former, it's now called the Juvenile Justice Service Center, but it was the Youth Study Center. And when John Street was mayor, it was pretty life changing, because we were made part of the Division of Social Services and I always thought I was very low on the food chain in city government, I actually still am, but yikes, I hang in there anyway. So I was suddenly... Nobody actually thinks you're low on the food chain, let me just know. So I was suddenly at the table with commissioners of major departments and Alba Martinez, who was the commissioner of the Department of Human Services really took us under her wing and Stahl Richmond, who was the managing director, said, look, I believe in an integrated model of government and believe that art should be part of how big departments do business, which was incredible. And we started working right away in prisons with the Department of Health, Department of Behavioral Health, and we started working at the Youth Study Center. So we sort of had this history of being at this site that was very sad. It was really just a terrible place, but we tried to bring beauty and whatever hope we could bring here. And we love the young people tremendously. And then we started about that same time we started working in the prison and we worked in the county jail and we work, we continue to this day to work at the state prison, then Greaterford, now Phoenix, but this was a Greaterford. And this guy's name kept coming up, Bill Perthes and the Barnes. And I was like, how is the Barnes connected to Greaterford? And it was very clear that Bill was talking to the men about art and about ways of looking at art and then by extension ways of looking at life and how they looked at themselves in relationship to art. And they had a deep and profound love of art and so much talent. And we ended up Bill connecting with you and I really wanna just say thank you and Christine. And we, I mean, I have to say like, this was so surprising to be invited to work with an institution like the Barnes on a project because for so long when I worked for the Antigraphy Network and the early years of mural arts, many of the high art people in the city didn't really value the work. I've spent a lot of years trying to understand that and unpack it, but over and over people would say you're not really doing public art and I would say we're in public doing art so if we're not doing public art, what exactly are we doing? And people would say you're doing social work but sort of with a bit of a lemon in their mouth. So I would say, well, I think social work is a noble profession. I tell the kids like, hold your heads up. We're gonna be vindicated one day. So of course, like later I'm like, yay, we are. Now we're vindicated. So being invited in to work with the Barnes was really a thrilling experience and that our restorative justice program could be rooted here, that we could eventually have a show here, that we could do projects here and programming here, that bill you care deeply about the men out at Graderford. This was really, I can't begin to tell you how important it is when you take a large institution like this with its power and its cachet and the art and it's like, it's really using its power for good and to partner with us, a community-based public art program so that this is, what happens in Philly often, it's a scarcity model and so we all run in our own lane and we don't often collaborate, although we love our colleagues a lot. But this was, you open the doors to us in a way that was so extraordinarily meaningful and lasting, like lasting. Like we just had a show open here, not that long ago. So it has really sustained and impacted us in a very deep way. So I think, so we sort of came in that way through our work in the prison, through our work in the new study center and then the thread was that the men there love art and we're just not gonna let it go. And so we have an art room in Phoenix, that's the new state prison and we continue to do this work to this day. So I don't know if you said this but when did it, how far back did it go? Bill, what do you think? I'm sorry, Dave. At least 10 years. At least 10 years and probably a little bit before that. And we've done like lots of different things with the Barnes, but the social justice work, the restorative justice partnership, I think is really deep and wonderful. And it's really sort of delineate. It's like there's such a line often between large institutions and medium size and small and who has what in the city and by opening the doors, the lines become more blurred and so that we all feel like, oh, we're all in this together. We just, Martha just talked about the shooting in the city which I think that happens every day. How do we solve these problems? Well, we better think about solving them together and this is a way that we can sort of collectively put a stake in the ground and say this city is ours and we are gonna move forward in a way that is collaborative. Yeah, that's beautiful. Valerie, you came to the Barnes a few years ago? Yeah, three and a half years ago. And I know you came most recently from Art Sanctuary which is an organization that really celebrates black art as a way of building communities and transforming lives. Yeah, and I always say you don't have to be black to like black art but continue. Good point. So what I was gonna ask you was what you're doing at the Barnes that kind of continues that work because I know that some of that work you're doing here too. Yeah, because what I learned at Art Sanctuary is that art is essential to the human condition. And what I also learned at Art Sanctuary is that art is generally, or often, is often one of the first things that gets stripped from the human condition when you talk about communities of color, when you talk about lower social economic communities, when you talk about any kind of marginalization, art is often stripped from external resources but at the same time, it actually, art cannot be repressed, right? So it continues to bubble up. And so, you know, what we see in our world is that in communities, and this is what I learned through Art Sanctuary, in communities that have been disinvested, there's so much creativity, there's so much art happening. I remember in 2006 when I was a member of the Leadership Philadelphia class and one Jane Golden came at our culminating ceremonies to tell her story. And one of the things that I loved and I then told, I don't know, 20 people. And I remember when I was apparently on my second or third round of telling the same people, they were like, we know, we know the story. But the story was that this graffiti was happening everywhere, right? In the city, it still happens, it happens everywhere. And there was this whole thing, the anti-graffiti network and there was these artists and this little irascible woman that's kind of in the community. And this group of artists showed up at her door and you know, Jane's a little bitty thing, right? So they imagine these big guys open, comes in her door and is like, whoa, hi. And they have books that they took from, that they stole from the library, tell me if I'm wrong, stole from the library art books and said, hey, he shows how to do this, right? Cause they have been doing it already on the walls but their technique might have been off, right? Like they really wanted to learn. And it's like you can't hold art down, if you will. And I often say to people, particularly folks who don't have the benefit or don't feel like they belong here or in PMA or Fleischer or any other of our amazing artistic resources that we take for granted. That first of all, it does belong to you. And then secondly, that when you see the people in your life expressing themselves, particularly children with crayons, if they happen to write on your wall, don't scold them, give them some paper, give them some space, get some chalkboard paint or dry erase paint and let them express themselves because just as those young men who came to Jane who said show us how to do it and they went from something that was technically illegal to something that we all can benefit from. It is exactly the same. And that's the work that we do here too, if you will. Like it's a long thread but I'm an associative thinker. So it's a long thread. So what are some of the programs that you do that are community based? Sure, so five or six years ago we started the community engagement and family programs. And I am just, I should say I'm the beneficiary of this great work that I get to come along and be a part of this. So community engagement and family programs, we have a great partnership in West Philadelphia, just blocks from where we were founded with People's Emergency Center. So what happens if we partner with organizations that are not technically arts organizations, right? And these two partners come together as equal partners and bring folks together. We go to where people are. We work hard to develop relationships and to be good guests in people's homes. We make art with them, we have performances with them and then we bring them to our home and they feel like this is our home. We also have a program called Puentes de Salud which is, or with Puentes de Salud is called Puentes a las Artes and so is Bridges to the Arts. And it's such a cool program, it's a novel program. In fact, case studies are being written about it right now and will be presented next week in Arkansas about this work where we work with toddlers, biliteracy and bilingual Spanish-speaking young people. We are frankly agnostic to people's status, they're human. So I don't know if they're immigrants or if they're not but that they're Spanish-speaking. And these children, this program is now five years old so our alumni are in second and third grade which is really awesome and the world opens up to them both from a language perspective. They believe that the Barnes is theirs. When they come here, they feel at home. Once a month we bring families in on some Sundays if you're a member and you happen to come in on a Sunday and you see a group of Spanish-speaking people because often the tours are in Spanish. Know that this is our Puentes a las Artes program. The first hour we will have a tour with them and we're doing kind of thematic if you will studying a particular artist. After the first hour, the second hour we bring them right down to our classrooms here, our Keen family classroom and our other seminar room. The families, the parents and the guardians go into one room and talk about things like parenting skills and how to navigate the public transportation system here. What do I do with my four year old? Those kinds of things. While the children are making art based on the themes that we just studied, we don't know what the full impact of that's gonna be. We won't know for 20 years, 25 years maybe but what we know is happening right now is that families are more engaged with both of these programs as well as our additional program which is our virtual reality program where we take goggles, virtual reality goggles and we go into communities. We've partnered with the library, the parks and rec, senior centers, organizations all around the city. And unlike many of the virtual reality goggles that you'll see now, particularly with the Metaverse, they don't strap on your head as they're meant to be social. So you hold it up to your face and you see the entire collection. You can go room by room and you'll have someone we call our community connector who's kind of guiding you, answering questions, oh hey, why is that guy in the green room? Why, what's going on? And then we invite them here. So we go imagine you're in the library, you encounter this thing that says art is for all and we ask you, do you wanna check out the Barnes Foundation and we have literally had people say, quote, oh, that building across the street there? I was wondering what that building was but I assumed that it wasn't for me. So, okay, I'll take a look and then once they look, they're like, oh, this is amazing. I can go there? I'm like, yeah, we'll take you over there. And to a person, I should say the images for our curatorial staff are like, oh, these images are so flat, colors are not right, it's not color corrected, it's not meant to be. It's not meant to replicate the experience of being in the Barnes. It's actually meant to eradicate the barriers of entering the Barnes. Because if you think that you've never, that you're not welcome or you think that that kind of art is not for you, then you may not want to come in but if you see it and you're like, whoa, this is amazing, imagine if you saw something that was, the color was not quite right. The Rousseau, the greens are not, they're a little flat but to you, they look amazing. Imagine what happens when you see it for the first time in real life. Imagine how you all felt when you saw those works of art. Without, to a person, what we've seen is people walk in, they walk into the first room and it's like, oh my gosh, did you see that? Oh my gosh. And that's amazing because art is for everyone. And so those programs, every one of those programs, plus we do work with toddlers all around the city in partnership with other organizations as well as a summer camp through Parks and Rec, all over the city. All of those programs, we give folks what we call our community pass, which is basically a membership for community members. And I'm so grateful to work in a place with my colleagues where we all recognize that what we're not doing is cannibalizing our membership program. What we are doing is expanding our audience and expanding our membership program, if you will. And so folks get to come back, whoever's holding the pass gets to bring three people, up to three people, unlimited amount of time for up to a year to get the same discounts that we as staff get in our shop, as well as in our restaurant and our food kiosk. And they know that they are welcome. And then finally what I'll say is right before COVID, we were talking to Leah who's in the booth there, Martha, Bill, we were all talking about scholarships because really what we are, as you all know, is an education institution that happens to have this amazing, amazing collection. Well, what would it look like if someone who has never been to the Barnes before encounters us through one of these programs in their community? And then they come into the Barnes and then we tell them, like, you know, you can learn more about this, like really? Yeah, in fact, we have scholarships. And so pre-pandemic, we had very limited number of scholarships because if you ever tried to sign up for a class, you know how quickly you have to type or dial the number to get a seat in the class. Well, because of the technology that we have available to us now, we've been able to offer income-based scholarships to so many people and it's been exponential, the number of people who've been able to participate at every level of the Barnes that we just could not do before just because of capacity and resources. And so I'm really grateful that it's not just my department. It takes the entire institution to kind of write ourselves, if you will, towards a particular thing that says, we actually believe just as art ignites change, art is parole. Okay, I'm actually literally tearing up because it's actually just beautiful. So when we talk about social justice, and Jane, I wanna start with you on this. And we talk about all these issues that really are about how people live, thrive, raise families, stay healthy and safe. And in the midst of all those incredibly concrete needs, how do you talk about why it is we should care about art? I love that question because I think value touched on it in many different ways because it humanizes us. I mean, if you think for a minute about, let's just think for a minute about Philadelphia and sort of close your eyes and think of Philly without 4,000 murals, without public sculpture, without arts institutions, without theater, without music, without spoken word, without writers. I mean, it starts to become a vision that is pretty bleak pretty quickly, right? And so just generally art enriches our lives, but I'm a very practical person. And so at Mural Arts, we're both aspirational and highly pragmatic. So every issue that is on the desk of the mayor and city council and commissioners is an issue that we are thinking about grappling with and acting on. Because otherwise, I feel this is not really a job for me, it's like a moral imperative to do a lot on behalf of Philadelphians. So what we see in our reentry program is phenomenal. We have a recidivism rate that hovers between, I don't know, eight and 10%. The national average is 65%. The national average is 65%. So we can have all these reentry programs where people are picking up litter and sort of doing things. I read about them all the time. Or we can really provide people with meaning. We can help people uncover sometimes the genius that lies within. You said you can't tamp creativity down, you can't. It flourishes. Like it's like a wildflower that grows in a vacant lot. It just grows. So art becomes a tool. Art becomes a way of building resilience and grit. How else, we think about our intractable problems. And there are traditional ways of dealing with them. And what sort of astounds me is they often fail us and then we just do it again and again and again. And so our ability as a society to hold onto creativity, innovation, artistic thinking, having artists at the table to think differently, to think out of the box is absolutely 100% critical. Because when we do that, something moves, something changes. In our behavioral health program, Portulate, we work with people struggling with housing and security, substance abuse, deep trauma. We work in new immigrant communities. We work with veterans struggling with PTSD. All of it, all of it across the board. Every complicated issue. Yesterday I was in Kensington. We have a Color Me Back program, a same day work program in Albuquerque, in Detroit, in Phoenix. And I could go on and on. They have same day work programs where people are picking up litter, are cleaning alleys, are doing whatever. But can't we dignify the human experience by providing people with beauty and opportunity and the ability to make their mark on our city in a big, bold, wonderful way? So standing at Kensington and Allegheny yesterday morning with 100 people who were cheering art, most of whom had never had any experience with art but now feel like they are artists, and they are. That's the thing, they are. And we've created pathways so people can go from working part-time to working more hours, to working more hours, to being an assistant teaching artist, a teaching artist, an assistant muralist, a public artist, so that this isn't just sort of a flash for them. In art education, we have 2,200 kids ranging from 11 to 18. For them, tapping into their imagination, challenging them, teamwork, leadership, letting them know they can have an idea and they can bring into fruition. What you're doing here at the Barnes is you're providing sort of food for the soul, so kids walk in here, that that could be them, that they could do that. It enriches their lives, it opens them up in ways that are sort of countless and endless. And so I actually think that art is the quintessential multitasker. I think it is what can give us sort of great inspiration and uplift. But it also, and I say this in all honesty, because I've been a witness to it for 30 years, it can transform people's lives, community's lives. And by extension, think about the impact on the civic life of our city. As Philly is indeed an outdoor museum, but one that has meaning, real meaning that resonates with the citizens who live here, because honestly, they are the true creators of this massive collection. Beautiful. How are you, what do you think? Oh my goodness, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I absolutely agree. And I think about it from the perspective of all of, like the full sphere of everything that we do, right? That we are an ecosystem and that in that ecosystem, Jane and I were chatting beforehand that seeing the barns is the first place to ever work where I met my best and highest use. And I'm so grateful, because first of all, it is absolutely possible to be in a job where you act your best and highest use and you get to have fun, which is awesome. And my dear friend and colleague, James Claymore, just walked back in, who was a board member with me when I was at our sanctuaries, our Curator of Public Programs. We've talked about like the idea of art transcending all of these issues, right? And that art can transcend an issue and at the same time be right embedded in it, right? And to can express the issues much more broadly and folks can accept them deeper and in a different kind of way than what we just, if we're just reading about it, right? If you all think about those, something that you might have thought, I don't know, negatively about, for example, or you were afraid to explore and you saw a movie or you read a book or you saw a piece of art and it allows us, just yesterday I was at Alper Philadelphia and talking about veterans and PTSD, they screened on a big screen, Soldier Story, which was all of, or Soldier Songs, which was all about PTSD and veterans and just the empathy that film engenders allows people to now think differently, not only about the veterans that they see, but literally, I encourage people to have empathy for everyone because we've all, actually we all kind of have PTSD after the last couple of years, right? But art is hard, it's one thing to say it, it's another thing to see it and feel it and art does that for us and so to disaggregate our humanity from the experiences that our humanity is having, doesn't make sense to me. And I so agree with you Val, we've had projects that are incredibly contentious where you have to sit, like in the beginning, you're like, this is never gonna work, that the ship is sinking, like, you know, and somehow the art is able to pull people together and inspire people to sort of acknowledge and recognize that it shines a light on diversity and difference, but it underscores a commonality, so that thread that you're talking about, that through life, it is a strong connecting force that we need today because we're so good in our world that there's so many divisions, dividers, boundaries, borders, right? And yet, somehow there's something universal about it, so when you're sitting at a table with the men at Graderford Prison and victims of advocates and victims of crime, like, what are the chances that they can actually see that they're the common humanity that exists in everyone and they actually couldn't see it when they sat in a circle and talked with a therapist or a clinician or a mediator, it escaped everybody and everyone just yelled at each other, claiming the most pain, but when they sat at tables and they painted together, past the green, past the blue, the power dynamics totally shifted. Suddenly they were all as one working on a piece of art and that was what Val is saying is so humanizing at the end of the day. Absolutely, absolutely. It transcends everything and as a multi-lingual, art is if you will, right? So my first love is music and I see music, and many of you know this because I'm looking around like, oh, they all know this stuff, but for those who don't know that Dr. Barnes really loves music and that he would pair music to some of the pieces, like he would pair a spiritual to a Picasso and he makes so much sense to me, you know, it makes so much sense and that to see those connections, I see that exactly in our humanity and I often say to folks that in addition to what Martha talked about with my job, I often say that my job is to ensure that every physical being that comes into this building feels welcome, feels that they belong here, that there is a connection between their lived experience and the art that's on the wall, which is a tall tale, since, you know, we're not all represented fully on the walls or in the objects, but there is something about the humanity that comes out of that art that connects and I've seen it, I've seen young people, I've seen families who've never been in the bars before saying, oh, look how she's holding her daughter. That reminds me of how my mom held me or that reminds me of my grandmother or that reminds me of my neighbor or whatever it's the human condition and so that we can transcend, we see the differences, we celebrate the differences, we're not trying to eliminate the differences, but we see those commonalities through that too and art can bring us together. That's interesting, because when you talk about, when you were in particular talking about restorative justice with people, but when you, even when you go into a community and they have to, the process of developing a mural, right, requires people in the community to come together and come to some kind of agreement or concession, right, just to build that, which then represents their neighborhood and is sort of over their neighborhood. That's right, and I would say that it's like a social compact, it's like an agreement that we have with each other, that we're gonna go into this and I would say at any given moment at mural arts, there are like 50 mural dramas going on, right, it's like there's like things going, you're sort of like someone that equated to sort of big wave surfing, like you're up and then you're down and then you're up and you're down, the waves come down and you're like, I'm drowning and then no, you see the sun and it's okay, because we're dealing with people, right, and it's the public and we're dealing with the public in a very real way, but I would posit that the movement here of muralism has been resilient, so resilient actually, because of the broad range of authors that are engaged, that if you say like it's really, the city is involved, because it's like, I love how you said what your job is, your job bottom line is to make sure people coming in here feel they belong totally, and I know in you that, I believe that 1,000%, so my job, so how do we make every Philadelphian feel that they belong, that they belong here, that they belong in their neighborhood, that they should have a life that's filled with decency, where they have some opportunity, because so many of the people we work with feel that they don't belong, right, and art at the end of the day is comforting and engaging, and when you work in communities and you ask people, well what would you like? And people are like, wow, back in the day people would say, you know Jane Golden, like either things are done to us or not done, and the only visual stimulation we have here are billboards advertising alcohol and tobacco, and so we would say, well what would you like? And so I remember this, a 20th and diamond, first, second, third choice was Mount Kilimanjaro, so then we did Mount Kilimanjaro, and then my friends in center city were like, I can't believe that you all are doing these like landscape murals, and I'm like, well what, where do you live? And they're like, well I live at 13th and Spruce, I'm like, so why do you think you get to tell people at 20th and diamond what they should have? You tell me that. Not your business, it's like, what? And it's like, oh, and I think that that was the gift of anti-graffiti because we just worked with community organizers who were like, you're gonna work it in the community, you go in with questions, you don't have answers, you don't make assumptions, you're not the smartest person in the room, you're going into someone else's home, period. Go in respectfully or don't go in. That was such good advice, and we have kept that near our hearts ever since. So I'd like to, I'm gonna open it up to questions, but before we do that, if people have questions, but before we do that, I just wanted to, Martha had posed a kind of a provocative question, which I think I'd love you guys to answer briefly, which is, she asked what responsibility museums have to the communities in which they are situated or are adjacent to. What is the answer to that? For us, we ask ourselves that question every day, frankly, and we are answering that question by way of the third thing that I didn't talk about, which is our guest and protection services. So right before the pandemic, we actually merged our frontline visitor services with our outsourced security team. And so you may have noticed if you come into the barns that you don't see people in guard uniforms. You may see some of the same people, but they're wearing different clothing, and it's not just about the clothing that they wear. It is about our, they are actually ours now, our staff. And so we combined these folks. And Martha and I worked almost like a year. Bill was a part of that team. The team kept getting bigger and bigger, which was great because we needed so many people around because at the core of it was going all the way back to the beginning about the foundation. And Dr. Barnes educating his staff, what would happen if we took the folks who are arguably maybe the lowest skilled, lowest paid, entry level, and we actually provided them an opportunity to see the world, the museum world in a way that they may have never seen before, particularly native Philadelphians going all the way back to us being, you know, Blue Collar Town. How you know Philadelph is a Blue Collar Town too. If someone says I'm a native Philadelphian, someone goes, oh yeah, really? What high school did you go to, right? She was what they say. So imagine someone comes in. We created a program that's called Pathways and it took us a while to do it. By the time we actually announced this new department, so our outsourced guards, if you will, and our internal visitor services team, we called them guest and protection services, people first, if you will, and that by the time we announced it here in this very room in January 2020, we were at version 18 of our organizational chart. Like, because we kept going back and forth, we were moving things around. We're actually on version 22 now. But the thing that really excited us, I think, the most took the longest for us to do was this Pathways program. So because it requires so much of us as an institution, as we went along, we had to keep reaffirming that what we were doing was actually what we said that we wanted to do and we were, everyone's on the same page, from our board to our staff, everyone. Which is, we are training the current and next generation of museum workers. We are actually diversifying our community from the inside out. About seven years ago, there was a research paper that said the whitest career in America was the museum curator. And I see some nod heads, yeah, like, we know it. And frankly, one could say that the museum worker is not too far behind, right? And so if you get beyond the front line staff, and so imagine, someone says, we say to them, what are you interested in? And as we did, we surveyed and things like conservation came up, which was really interesting. Education came up. What is curatorial? All these things, social media, all the parts of the institution came up. And so it's like, okay, great. Now we got people who are interested in these things. Now we got to get people who actually want to help train people. And so we have a very, a really well run stellar internship program. And so we consulted with Stephanie Stern, who runs our internship program. And she helped oversee the making of an internal internship program where our staff is very competitive. They apply to these projects, 12 to 16 week long projects that our staff, our colleagues say, we will create for our colleagues. And they can walk away with something for their portfolio. They could also walk away as like, dear God, I never want to see that thing again. It's better to know. Then, you know, and we've had people move on. We've had people move up and we've had people move on. We also encourage our staff, all of our staff to take classes, to read. This is one of the most contemplative places I've ever been. And I worked for Temple University for eight years. And so one of the ways to change the world is to actually start where you are. And I believe that's what we're doing. And it's not one person, and that's the beauty too. That is all of us together, that we are partners in this. And it's exciting. And we cheer when our frontline, members of our frontline staff have been elevated to areas that they never thought that they would be able to ascend. Yeah, so I mean, for me, I think that, I think the Barnes is really a good example of a museum that is really very aware of their responsibility in a city. And so that the borders are sort of more porous, right? I think like, so I've always loved, I came up as a painter and I love galleries and museums, but working at anti-graffiti was interesting to see so much raw talent and work with so many young people who didn't have opportunities. And we started this program where we would come to the museum on Saturdays and everybody got to pick the collection they wanted to see. And then we started having these fabulous artists like Richard Watson, Charles Searls, James Dupri would meet us there and then they would show us their favorite collection. And the museum sort of became a home. And the kids would say, you know, Jane, like this is just like out of the movie Rocky that was a real whole relationship with it. It was like this house on a hill that was completely detached. So, but I realized that it didn't have to be that way. And the question then is how does the museum do their work with real integrity? So it's not just a few four week classes that it's year round, that there's this broader commitment and how is there an acknowledgement about the arts ecosystem in our city and what we want. So mural arts is hiring what we employ hundreds of artists every year doing 140 works of public art like so, but we shouldn't be separate. The outdoor museum and all those artists and all the art making that goes on shouldn't be separate from an institution like this. So again, I'll say this again and again and again that I, because I think that we're behind as the fifth largest city in the country, we are behind. We have to acknowledge that the cultural organizations in our city are world class. There is a plethora of talent in the city. And yet we don't value it the way we should. And the way we start changing that is we start valuing it, we all start doing it. So I applaud Val what you're doing and everybody here at the Barnes because you're acting on it. And our challenge for all of us is to ask ourselves what is it we believe in and do our best to act on the beliefs that we have because the world that we create today is the one that we pass on and what do we want? What do we want for our city? There is strength in numbers and collaboration and creativity. Really well said. Are there questions? I have questions, so if you don't, I'm good. Oh wait, there's one left. I have questions all the way back. That's our cool talk spot. Isn't it cool? I talked to this. So I have, I'll just ask my first question. I am a native of North Carolina and have been in Philadelphia total on two trips about 25 years. And so the question I have is related to when I went to North Carolina, I spent quite a bit of time there this summer. And so you have a lot of people migrating to the South from areas like New York, Philadelphia, all different areas. And one of the things that when I went there was really to examine the art scene in the South. I was born and raised and had a particular perspective of the South. But one of the things that the South has begun to do is to not separate art, black art, Hispanic art, white art. They have really done an excellent job with re-envisioning what the art world is and not really segregating it. When I think about Philadelphia and they don't have an African-American museum that's dedicated to African-American art because it's being integrated into all the various art places in the city. And I happen to be from Raleigh, North Carolina. So when I return back to Philadelphia and see this very kind of segregated way of experiencing art, having this art exhibit, this portraying African-American art, even when the artist, when I think of Moe Booker, you can't, when you look at his art, you can't tell that he's a black man. So how far, how do you begin to think about ways of moving beyond this kind of segregated way of art when you said it has the capacity to unify? How do we move beyond that in a city like Philadelphia that can really set the pace for the region? When places like Atlanta, even, I've lived there and the South are really moving to this new place of expression. So first of all, are you Julie Rainbow? I am Julie Rainbow. Oh yeah. You're making a story of that. Yeah, this one does really beautiful. Julie Rainbow, yeah. Well thank you Julie for that question. I don't know if I can answer it other than saying that what you are speaking to is frankly the dirty open secret of Philadelphia that we are a very segregated city. I can't speak for other cities. I can speak for Philadelphia. We are a very segregated city. We are segregated in almost every way except for sports, right? You see people come together around sports. You see people come together depending on the art form. You see people come together. You sometimes you see people come together around food. But other than that, it is possible, and I say this all the time, which is mind boggling to some people that is possible in Philadelphia to be born in the same neighborhood and you never leave and you never have to necessarily see anybody that's different from you because of the way we have been acculturated if you will. At the same time, we sit in the city that has that both the only UNESCO World Heritage Site in North America, right? Like how can both of those things be true? But they are. And so I think the issues go back to, it goes back to leadership and I think it goes from the individuals, from whether it's organizational or individually, it starts at the top, it starts with politics, it starts with our leaders. But I think, and I think that we still need the institutions that we have. We still need Atelier Puerta Regaño, for example. We still need the African American Museum. We still need the Rodin, right? We still need the PMA. We still need the Barnes. We need all of those. And I think what you're saying is that but is it possible for all of us to come out of ours, spaces and connect? And I think that's one of the things that we are doing and you are seeing it in many different ways around the city. As I, again, looking at James, thinking about the artists that we bring in from a performance perspective. On this stage last November, we had something called the vagina chorus. It was awesome. It was amazing. We didn't know what it was gonna be, but just the fact that we were saying the word vagina regularly was, that was shocking to know. But it turned out to be about women and empowerment. And the women who were on the stage came from all walks of life, from various socioeconomic conditions, if you will, or status. And they literally, I mean, it was interesting, but they were singing with their bodies and what connected them. They created this sisterhood, going beyond the obvious differences. I think that's where it kind of starts. I don't know, James. No, and I actually think that the murals do that. Oh yeah, that was what I was gonna say too, yeah. Because I'm always astounded, like in a good way, like our dedications. It's like sort of like a snapshot of our city. And I'm just like, oh, this is so great. And in fact, people have likened the murals to sports that way. Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. And the barns itself, right, has a combination of, I mean, the African art collection and the European art collections side by side. And so this is an example of it here. And our chief curator, Dr. Nancy Irison, has created like a curatorial program, if you will, that when we have our three special exhibitions, okay, I'm gonna need your help. One is geared towards like an extension, if you will, of the collection. One is of people of African descent or people of color and then one around women, was that correct? Oh, that's fantastic. And so that's another way, right? So if you came, if you got to see Isaac Julien, for example, over the summer, you had to see actually the whole world, lots of people even flew in just to see that. And it's not a one and done kind of thing, if you will, like, oh, we had the blacks, we won't have them again for another five years, right? Like that's not the case. And we want everyone to come to all of our exhibitions. And in fact, when we're in community, we make sure that the folks that we are in community with, regardless of their ethnicity, get to come and experience that art also. What are your ideas about bringing more art to the street? I attended Roberta Lugo a couple of weeks ago, had a talk at the Smithsonian. And one of the part of his PowerPoint, he showed how he set up a potter's wheel in the middle of Kensington one afternoon, and all these people were coming up and holding the clay. And it was just so transformative for some of those people. And we're talking about people who are straying out on opioids. But they were holding the clay, and it was so meaningful for them. And I look at all the violence in the city, and I just think how can we reach more people? Well, that was our event, and it was awesome. And we have a program called Lots and Lots of Love. And what we're doing is reclaiming vacant lots in Kensington and activating them with poetry and art making and pottery. And he was right. It was astounding to see the line of people who wanted to use the wheel. And I'm happy to say that we got a Pew Center for Arts and Heritage grant to work with Roberta to reclaim parks and do these giant sculptural pieces like vessels that will be made, people will be contributing thematically to what the vessels look like, and kids can climb in them. And then we're gonna have a mobile pottery studio that will go around to a part of our city that I think has been hardest hit. So I think to answer your question, for real, we just have to be as a city, and this is also about leadership, like because you have to commit the resources to do this, to be absolutely vigilant, intentional, tenacious, dedicated, and say it's non-negotiable that we're gonna deliver art to every part of the city. That's what we're gonna do. And we're gonna do it because we're gonna make sure that every school in the city, because I can't believe this is impossible, has art education, and we're gonna make sure that a place like the Barnes has the resources to go out and do all the great work they're doing. That mural arts, if we're doing 145 works of public art a year, why don't we think about doubling that? If we have 2,000 kids in our after-school program, what if we're aspirational and say 5,000? If we have 200 people in our reentry program, that's nothing. We need to say we have 2,000 to 3,000 people. If kids, if we have to say, we just don't accept violence with our kids, we're not gonna accept it. And this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a massive workforce development program where we're gonna put people to work reclaiming public space and making it beautiful and transforming rec centers so they don't look like bunkers. And we can do it. And you know why I know we can do it? Because we're doing it? Because in anti-graffiti, when Wilson Good came into office, graffiti was a social epidemic. And when he said I'm gonna work with the kids and they're gonna help me, the people writing on walls are gonna help me clean up Philly. And everybody said that's not gonna work. Only it did work. He could have done what every city across the country was doing, go paint out graffiti. We wouldn't spend another $10 million painting out graffiti, good luck. Do we think that's gonna stop it? No. But we could tomorrow employ 1,000 kids and get them to start adding to the collection of public art in this city. It's about when people say they're no resources, I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. There are always resources. It is about choices. A budget is a moral document. We wanna change the city. Let's muster the political and social will to change the city. Jane Golden for Mayor, I'm just saying. I was just gonna say, both of these people, both of these people could work for Mayor. And I actually wanted to ask you, and you mentioned this, you both touched on leadership. And you kind of answered this, I guess, but we're about to have a mayoral race. And what do you wanna see from the next mayor? I mean, I guess you answered that a little bit, Jane. Well, go ahead. Well, I mean, first of all, we need a department of arts and culture. We need a cabinet level position. I mean, let's talk about this, the arts, right? And then we just need that. I think it's just what we should have. And again, fifth largest city in the country. And it should be like it's a fabulous resource. We should have an artist's bill of rights for individual artists. We should have a resource center. So every nonprofit, also it's small arts nonprofits, shouldn't be mystified. They want help with grant rating, boom, done. We can help you. You want help with marketing, communications, all these strategic things that are needed in order to sing, that's what we're gonna do. I mean, I think we should have, we should think about public health, public safety. I mean, we have to be able to sort of have a mayor who is both, I use the term aspirational and pragmatic. We want someone who can understand what really makes the city sing and tick. And at the same time deal, understand that we need a thriving business community. And so who is it who has this sort of 360 degree view who's gonna hire really good people and empower them and give them the authority and the budget and hope that they have the creativity to make a difference. That's, there're gonna be a lot of people in the race and we have to make a good decision. Yeah, and having said all of that, I believe that is all, everything that Jane just said is absolutely possible and we can still be thinking about all the other things because the reality is, to your point about not having enough resources, we do have a lot of resources, we have enough resources. They're often misappropriated. So when we talk about low resource communities, no, they're mis-resourced communities because did you know that the average community, the average block in Philadelphia, particularly in certain zip codes, they call them million dollar blocks. They call them million dollar blocks not because the people who live on them make a million dollars but that's about how much it costs to police and to incarcerate and all of the negative things for those communities. But if we were to turn them around and I've seen it myself too, that it is possible. And then you get actually to the court, okay, so since we're talking aspirational, here's the thing. I think that we could move from being the poorest, largest city in this country relatively easily by reappropriating our dollars, our resources as everything that you just said and it doesn't negate any of the other things. So it doesn't negate the sciences. It doesn't negate the hard parts of our society but what it does is expand and I believe that we are able to do this because I have one, I used to have two examples but I have one example about our society. There was a man, I wasn't born then but there was a man who stood up at a wooden podium much like this one and said, you see that thing up there? But at the end of this decade, we're gonna be walking on that thing. That man couldn't do it, John Kennedy. And the people who could do it were like, wait, wait, wait, wait, what, we're gonna do what? And we did it because we had the will and we put the resources behind it. And if we move from the zero sum gain, right? Into it could be a win, win for all of us. It would change. Like, I just believe it. I don't think it's like a fantasy. It's weird, like, I don't know, let's run from here together. I know I do. You're hurting your first. That's great. I think we're out of time. I know you all, everybody has things to do. So this was fabulous. Let's give these ladies a big applause. Thank you. Thank you so much. You'll get your ballot in the mail. I encourage you to vote and also, you know, there's a little place to write in people's names and they'll give you the spelling on the way out. Thanks, everyone. Thank you so much, Roxanne. Thank you. Thank you, Martha. Thank you. Thank you, Leah.