“That Was Another Epic Mistake on My Part”

Here you can hear Nancy Spector admitting to the fact that organizing a panel to discuss my work and leaving me off of it was, “another epic mistake on [her] part.” Note the disdain with which she says, “this particular person.” Also note that she said “another mistake.” Even she acknowledges that there were many, and these were all decisions rooted in racism, hubris, stupidity, envy, greed, ego, and anti-social behavior.

For those outside of the art world, there is no precedent for hosting a panel about a curator’s work without the curator. It is practically unheard of, especially when it was the only panel organized for an incredibly popular show. What made it even more abnormal and retaliatory was that Spector and the Guggenheim made the decision to organize very little programming for the exhibition in general. Many, including myself, saw this as a gesture to erase the public record of the Defacement show, leaving as little trace of it as possible. Spector is not expressing regret about the harm to the historical record, but rather that the Guggenheim was caught in the act.

Nancy Spector, Joan Young (Director, Curatorial Affairs, and still employed at the museum), and the Education department organized the November 5, 2019 panel. They invited the late Greg Tate, Johanna Almiron, Aruna d’Souza, Jessica Bell Brown of the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the newly hired (but not publicly announced) Ashley James. Tate and Almiron were contributors to my catalogue, reinforcing the unspoken understanding that the panel was indeed about my work. It also reiterated Spector and the Guggenheim’s message of violence, racism, retaliation, and frustration with the reality that I owned the copyright to the scholarship, which had the Guggenheim followed the law, would have limited what they could do without my permission.

James, who can be heard in other audio on this website strategizing how best to erase my voice for the Guggenheim, was also there to fulfill this role of erasure. Her presence was a signal to me from the Guggenheim that the next Black person had already arrived to replace me, and that she would be there to erase my work. If you know what you’re listening to and looking at, the messaging is clear.

In a conversation that I had with Tate shortly before his death in December 2021, Tate privately expressed regret that he participated in the panel, as we discussed the historical ramifications of his name being associated with it. There is documentation of this conversation.

Caption: Nancy Spector can be heard saying, “We really tried to kind of, lift her up and help her…and we realized, she herself, this particular person is not…again, it doesn’t mean we…there’s so much work we have to do. So much work.” Then Katherine Brinson, Curator of Contemporary Art, says, “Could you both [Nancy Spector and Joan Young] talk a bit about the decision to stage the panel…because that wasn’t really involved in this narrative…and obviously that was hugely catalytic.” Spector responds: “Yeah, and that was another epic mistake on my part.”