The voice that you hear is Elizabeth Duggal, the former COO of the Guggenheim. I was called into a meeting on November 11, 2019 with Richard Armstrong. I brought with me the artist Elizabeth Axtman. Elizabeth Duggal can be heard telling me, when I asked her what would the Guggenheim like to see happen next, “We’ll learn our lessons, you learn your lessons and I think….you’ve had a chance to say what you wanted to say both privately and publicly and I would move forward. It’s what I said to you before, and I haven’t changed my opinion on that.”

When Duggal says, “I said to you before” she is referencing the many attempts that she and the Guggenheim had made to get me to stop agitating the museum, and to stop saying that I was the first Black curator in the Guggenheim’s 80 year history (a title distinct from co-curator because I was the first Black person brought into the museum to curate an exhibition with full agency).

The next day was my last day at the museum, and at the end of the meeting, Duggal wanted to confirm that, and the time. Within three days, the Guggenheim released the news that Ashley James had been hired as their first Black staff curator and had started the day I left.