“Museums can connect the radical past with the radical present.” Anne Pasternak, director of the Brooklyn Museum, believes that museums can play a crucial role in current conversations of social justice. By showcasing historic collections in new settings, they serve as the meeting point of different times, cultures, and beliefs.
On Wed., Sept. 28, Pasternak spoke at the Yale Law School in a talk organized by the Schell Center for Human Rights’ JUNCTURE Initiative, which explores the intersection of art and human rights. Held in a small YLS lecture room, the event consisted of a short presentation by Pasternak followed by a conversation led by David Kim, JUNCTURE’s deputy director. The talk attracted a diverse crowd: law students, undergraduates, and Connecticut residents, as well as representatives from the Yale Center for British Art and the Yale University Art Gallery.
During the presentation, Pasternak drew from her experience as former director of Creative Time, an arts nonprofit based in New York, where she worked closely with artists to create public works that “disrupted the everyday experience.” Prominent commissions included Tribute in Light, by Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda, in which two beams of light shine upwards on the anniversary of 9/11 to commemorate lives lost. Pasternak placed the piece in the broader context of activist art by comparing it to the work of Laurie Jo Reynolds, whose “legislative art” works towards policy goals.
In her current role, Pasternak manages a 1.5 million-object collection drawing from of a range of time periods and civilizations. Located in Crown Heights, New York’s second-largest museum stands out from its peers because of its distance from 5th Avenue. Pasternak has faced challenges running an encyclopedic museum within a low-income, rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. “I believe that the Brooklyn Museum’s location is an opportunity,” said Pasternak. The museum actively partners with community organizations, surrounding public schools that lack art programs, and other public institutions in Brooklyn. She also suggested that visitors at the Brooklyn Museum search for a bolder experience to reflect the atypical setting. Visitors encounter Egyptian relics and a Center for Feminist Art within the same building; recent exhibits include Who Shot Sports: A Photographic History, Agitprop, and Isreal & The West Bank
Pasternak has encouraged the museum to rethink its collection and find new ways to tell stories. A revamped American Gallery begins with a focus on indigenous artwork and considers “who an American really is.” Rather than portray American exceptionalism, the new permanent exhibit considers both tragedies and triumphs within American history and depicts a more diverse array of Americans with portraits of women, people of color, and indigenous peoples throughout.
The changes, while not particularly radical in Pasternak’s view, mark a large shift in the institutional display of American history. They have not come without controversy; a recent article in the Wall Street Journal criticized the exhibit for being “sabotaged by political polemics” and seeming “perversely fixated on what’s wrong with our country’s past.”
In her presentation, Pasternak explained that museums, while temples of artifact, have a public responsibility to serve as a forum for debate about the representation of history, art, and people. By mediating conversation through objects, museums can embrace their roles as civic spaces for a diverse assembly of voices.
As Pasternak herself put it: “If museums can’t tell truthful stories, what good are they?”