 You forgot to say at the beginning of the screening and it's very important. We do have some sponsors for this screening and some of you may have seen them around. They meet to almost every film, Pam Wintle and Henry. Sorry, they're very close friends and suddenly I forgot his surname. Henry Griffin. They were around the first few days and they were really looking forward to being here at this screening but they had to leave very, very slightly and go back to their home in Washington D.C. for family reasons. So I thank them very much anyway. Kristen Hansen. Elections and exhibitions at the Fleming Museum of Arts at the University of Vermont. Maybe you could go closer. It's very awkward having to push the mic into your mouth so I'm really sorry about that. Okay, we'll try again. So my name is Kristen Hansen and I'm the curator of collections and exhibitions at the Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont and I just started in that position about a year ago. So I'm happy to share with you a little bit about what we're doing at the Fleming Museum and to discuss thinking through the history of the museum, the history of the collecting and in terms of reimagining the museum so that it can be more inclusive, welcome and relevant to our audiences. So like I said, I arrived in August of 2022 and one of the things that drew me to this position is the opportunity to work at an academic art museum where we would have more opportunities to take risks and chances and push boundaries unlike at previous institutions where I have worked at the Art Institute of Chicago which is much more limited in terms of the types of shows that were being put on. Additionally, I saw the Fleming Reimagined Initiative and Vision Statement that had been posted on the museum's website. That's an initiative that was started in the summer of 2020 to start really critically thinking and evaluating the history of the museum as an institution and to look critically at whose stories, narratives and lives are being represented by works in the collections and who had been historically marginalized, erased or sort of left out of the collection but also being represented. So those are things that we're working on now and that we're trying to fold into all aspects of museum practice. So it's not just about the works that you're seeing in the galleries or the programming that's happening, it's at every level of museum practice. So I'm happy to open up to questions about anything that you saw in the film that you thought was interesting or specific questions that you might have about the work that's happening at the Fleming now. Maybe I'll speak loudly. How do you forget? Good. The audience, right? The Fleming is a collection of objects that is both broad and specific meaning that you're going to focus some of your activities on artists who've probably been here in the region, right? And thinking about collecting broadly sort of the future for the more diverse works. I work at Sheldon Museum and we have similar channels when thinking about our support holdings. I'm curious about this. Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you. And I can speak to one of the projects that I most recently worked on was an installation of paintings in our Marble Court balcony, which is a space that because of the light that comes in through the windows can't really tolerate showing works on paper or textiles. So I was limited in terms of selecting paintings and I decided to show a selection of regional landscapes of Vermont and New England because that's a large strength of our collection. But the more that I looked, the more that I realized that we were really limited in terms of women artists and artists of color. So I think two of the 15 paintings in that space are works by women. And one way that I tried to address that was to be really transparent by creating labels that reflected on museum practice and were really transparent about those gaps and limitations in our collection. One of them in fact starts by asking viewers who's missing or underrepresented in this gallery, the answer is women, and I go on to explain why that's the case. And in another label I also ask whose perspective is missing in this gallery and one of those answers is Indigenous Peoples. And in fact, one of the women artists who's shown in the gallery is Felicia Meyer Marsh and she's entered our collection largely because of her association with men. Her father was a painter and then she married Reginald Marsh and I sort of think that her work wouldn't have entered into the collection and wouldn't have been accepted if it wasn't bundled together with the gift of work by her father and then work by her husband. But to talk about going forward we're right now working on a collecting plan which I think will lay out quotas as they were talking about in the film that will be really specific about what type of work we want to collect and who we want to give visibility to. I actually had invited, contacted the Shelburne Museum to participate in the Q&A and was told that it's too complicated. Oh, that's true. I can tell you that every curator I've ever done I have had, you know. Just saying. So I wanted all the local curators to be here. Yes, there's a... Yeah, it's a really interesting collection and I think that part of the exhibition was basket and in the film you're settled, you're able to say, hey, you just want to be kind of representative of, you know, whatever, I don't know. Actually, no, thanks. So I think with that kind of capacity that there's a bunch of ways are to be set. You know, this is the 15 hours where I'm not not related, you know, to marriage and births. You might not have got views or we're not going to get that far. So my question is, is there probably a different question at the beginning of the process and if so, how do you select the curators? And how does... And how does how do you select the curators either validate or invalidate the process so that as the content of the museum becomes more diverse and more inclusive historically it's not just on a whimsy or just because someone has to be able to enact your own, or whatever, right? But if there's some kind of vision of our society here, how does that happen? I think something that I was struck by throughout the film is who was at the table and who wasn't in terms of all of these different types of decisions that were being made. We saw three, four people at the table, most often white men, and they're talking about how do we have our collection be more inclusive and diverse when we're not asking the very people who are making this art or the audiences who are coming to the museum what it is that they want to see. And I think that's probably where we're going forward is that we're going to be more democratic and transparent in these processes and maybe open up acquisitions, ideas for brainstorming to students or present a pool of works and ask students or... For what sort of piece of art is this? I think that there would be some value that we could bring out, whether you're reading a series of books or whatever kind of way of art you're doing it. I think that's the first piece of art. So if you're reading for visual art or art of color, who are you going to become and then who do you reach out to? Or whatever it is. And I think without that, we're left with a little bit of sense of why we can, you know, work with people at all. And I think part of what we also want to do is create more opportunities for community engagement. So these selections of works by artists of color are not independent and completely removed from the communities that we're interacting with. We're building relationships that are leading us to supporting local artists and bringing them into the fold and creating lasting relationships as opposed to just buying something and bringing it to the museum as though we've solved a problem. There's a question there, Michelle. Okay, number one. Very close. Can everybody hear me today? One thing that I thought was really interesting and I like that you brought up the conversation about who was at the table and that being interrogated a little bit later in the film was something that I found fascinating just in my own experiences living in Vermont these last six years. There was such a binarial thinking happening where it was we want more women. We want more people of color. But then it gave me the impression that there was a lack of understanding that there's intersection. So then we need to get more women but then we can't have more people of color. We get more people of color than we can have women which then also made me go, so then aren't I a woman then? So would I not fit both of those categories, right? And then also when they did bring up the person of color and it was a man. So then it was like we went back through the hierarchical structure and we started to open the door for. I'm curious about what you felt about that watching it and then what has been your experience as a curator as, and please forgive me on my own assumption, a woman in this space doing this work and then trying to be more equitable in this work. This was the position of Antonia Gray who was on the beat before. Thank you. I think that I really struggled to find the right language to talk about some of the art in our collection and I think that in some cases I'm not the best person to write about and describe the art and I think part of what we're also trying to do is democratize whose voices and perspectives are appearing in the gallery through label texts and through other means of describing and interpreting the works. A direction of moving the floors. And it's really hard to reduce artistic categories. I always am worried about the language that I'm using to describe artists, especially if they're not alive and they would not use those terms in their own lifetime. I'm worried about retroactively applying terms to them that don't accurately reflect or communicate their lived experience and that's really challenging. Yes. I just wanted to also critique our use of the word quality because I think that a lot of our ideas on what is good have been limited by, forgive me, the patriarchy that is about only promoting certain perspectives. And so as a pilot musician and as a classical musician we have a very narrow picture of what is good and what defines goodness. And so many artists now are really pushing that and for me it's a personal struggle. And so when you said quality and how do we make sure that these works are of quality. I think we have to admit that. Thank you. Janey Cohen, the previous curator. No. Executive director. Close, close, close. More on observation. Major question probably. But one of the things that's striking is that the issues that the statement is dealing with are a narrower set of issues than the ones that the planning of other musicians like the planning of the gentleman which is a collection that basically tells the story of the audience. You know, a collection that came about through means that have really difficult stories about it. So, you know, it's a, I mean it's, you know, so... It's a, it was interesting to me to see this play out in the culture that obviously is so effective by American culture. But I think that ultimately the European and American collections that were built on colonialism have a world of and a world of challenges and a world of remediation basically to do more work. So this was, I had so much joy seeing this and you know, it was, it was so... My heart. Yeah, it's so great. So, you know, I also have a question. Thank you. We have time for just two, three. I think we're done. You have, okay. There is the scene, well, the shots, whatever, of the individual who was the art collector who had so many options. And a black person that kind of, it impurates me in a way because they're just sitting in his basement, they're dusty, he stepped on them, he slid her to hold them down when, you know, sometimes I can't even afford the art I want. But there are a few amounts of it just sitting waiting to sell it, to buy it. Or, you know, in other places you've got people whose great-grandmother has a whole stash of, say, Abinike thinks that they should be returned to their people or should be on display. So my question is, what is, or is there a plan for a more ethical procurement of certain art that you'd be displaying at the filming? That's a good question. I'm thinking your question starts with me thoughts about the ethics of collecting and what we purchase and under what circumstances. And I mean, those are questions that we're grappling with, not only in terms of collecting, but also with atriation. You know, right now there are laws in place about things that need to be returned under certain circumstances, but then there are also all of these words that we suspect or know were probably obtained unethically. And, you know, our thinking going forward is can we build relationships with these communities and return those works and perhaps support their living artists by acquiring works equitably from them and show those works and return works that we shouldn't have in the first place and that are part of a living culture and community that needs amount so that their current artists can draw on those. So that's, I think, what immediately came to mind, but, you know, I was also disturbed by the laying out an infinite number of works and just then being reduced to a commodity and then being reduced to something that allows for me to check off that box. Oh yeah, so now we have one more work that fills this quota without this sort of human connection and relationship with the maker. Thank you. One more question? Yeah, Katie? I'm going to answer a solution but it is a further complication that relates to your question. So, the emissions elements we made in the bill and showed us that in the World War I there's a big hanging. It's a beautiful works of art, right? When we look at his body work one of the challenges now is most of Ella's works are being sold to western collectors and while they're garnering themselves for you know, the pain of the world of art and the adults, right? One of the sort of critical realities of this is that communities in countries where folks are wrong. Folks who are not afford to have these objects in their own countries. And so the larger problem that Chris is talking about has to do with the market and our practices of acquisition and just this whole sort of cycle, right? Like, if someone has a monographic exhibition of their work all of a sudden those works go up and down and all of a sudden they become more appealing to collectors and you have to ask them to make it seem like it's a great work. I work at 319.35 buying different works. So we have a whole set of different issues that apply but that issue of the market is increasingly challenging and it's something that we can't get away from. So I have an answer for you. I really appreciate your question. I wish we had some something other than they do. So it's not just an investment in a thing that we can have and show in our museum but it's an in kind investment to the community of makers so that they can keep and own and display some of their own work. Maybe we should all become guerrilla girls. Thank you all very very much.