Wage increases just a start toward equity efforts at Baltimore museums

Like many of America’s institutions, art museums have largely left out the contributions of African Americans, women and other people of color, their permanent exhibits generally filled with the works of white men. The racial makeup of the executive staff and boards of these museums traditionally also has been very homogeneous and, therefore, the thinking very white centered. Baltimore’s two largest museums are confronting and acknowledging this one-dimensional past that essentially treated whole populations as if they were invisible and made no contribution to the art world. Baltimore is a city that is more than 60% Black, but those residents couldn’t find much of themselves in its museums even today.