Kira Lee-Mundschau

As the 2019-20 Meg Reitman Jacobs ’63 Endowed Intern at the Tang Teaching Museum, I completed numerous projects with the Tang Engagement Department, with a focus on community outreach and event planning. For my main project, I created an event series about call-out culture and cancel culture to explore sociopolitical divisions and how to navigate them on individual and institutional levels. Though the events were temporarily disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, I learned so much in planning, adjusting and, eventually, realizing them.

“Call-out culture” is when individuals or institutions are publicly shamed, often on social media, for problematic behavior. What makes call-out culture unique is its extremely public nature. Call-outs both point out wrongdoing (or a perceived wrongdoing) and publicize it before mass audiences, thus catalyzing social ostracization. Cancel-culture, while similar, is far more intense in that it disavows forgiveness. I noticed that both these cultures responded to and exacerbated the political and social polarization on campus and around the nation. As an Art History student, I was intrigued by how these cultures affected artists and by the issue of whether an artwork can be divorced from the artist who created it, therefore liberating the meaning of the artwork from the artist’s thoughts, actions, and history. This debate is especially salient when grappling with artists who have been called-out or cancelled. For my internship, I created an event series that explored these themes, with a focus on vigilante justice, mediation of ideological divisions, and processes of accountability.

In the Fall semester, I conducted extensive research and interviewed Skidmore faculty and students on call-out culture and related themes in preparation for the event series in spring 2020. The first two events would include a twenty-minute talk with Skidmore professors and program directors, followed by a discussion among students. To me the student discussion was the most important part. People are often fearful of speaking, worried they’ll be called out for saying the wrong thing. So I wanted to create an environment where students can have honest and candid dialogues about controversial topics, which can be transformative experiences.

The first event would be a broad analysis of call-out and cancel cultures, with an introductory talk by Skidmore Professor Beck Krefting, whose research includes cancel culture in the comedy world. Students could then discuss the power of social media, free speech, safe spaces, individual accountability, the impact of social rejection, and the effectiveness and downfalls of call-out culture.

The second event would focus on call-out and cancel cultures in the art world, and the issue of divorcing art from the artist. The event was to feature a panel of Ian Berry, Dayton Director of the Tang; Saleema Waraich, Professor of Art History and former curator; and Sarah Freidland, filmmaker and Director of MDOCS’s Storyteller’s Institute talking about call-outs, accountability, and activism in the art world.

The final event was to be a workshop on art activism in tandem with The Center for Artistic Activism. This organization conducts research on what makes an effective art activism project, and offers guidance and resources for individuals and associations engaged in such projects. I wanted the series to move from discussion to action, where students could start to enact tangible change. This event would include a brainstorming session where students could share their issues with Skidmore’s policies and culture, and, in conjunction with what we’ve learned about call-out and cancel cultures, begin constructing courses of action towards social change.

The series was scheduled for April. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. I had to adapt. The events moved into the virtual realm and shifted to July. In the meantime, the murder of George Floyd by police propelled the Black Lives Matter movement to the center of national consciousness. Though call-out and cancel cultures had been used as mechanisms of vigilante justice before, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement coincided with an increased interest and participation in both cultures. So I adjusted the scope of my work to focus more on the functions of call out and cancel cultures at this moment.

Ultimately, my project became a two-part series. The first event was a Tang Live featuring Skidmore student activist Sanjna Selva ’21, an International Affairs major and Documentary Studies minor who is a co-editor of Skidmore News and active with Pass the Mic, a student-run social activism podcast and radio show. On the Tang’s Instagram, I talked about the work I’d done for my project and then spoke with Sanjna about the complexity of free speech, whether call-out culture creates or damages safe spaces, and how identity politics inform power dynamics within call-out culture. Though the Tang Live format was a conversation between two people, we had an audience that could view and comment in real time, which helped foster the atmosphere of community and democracy I wanted.

The second and main event was a Zoom webinar a week after the Tang Live event. Attendees RSVP’d so I could send two articles to read in advance and to ensure an atmosphere of community. Student participants discussed the intricacies of call-out culture as a potential vehicle for social change and shared relevant personal experiences. Though I had planned the talk to be an hour and a half, several students stayed longer to passionately discuss this controversial topic. That impressed upon me the importance and timeliness of our conversation.

I was initially drawn to the Meg Reitman Jacobs ‘63 Endowed Internship for the amount of freedom it offered, and as my time at the Tang comes to a close, this is the aspect that I continue to be most grateful for. This internship has not only taught me valuable skills for working in museum engagement, it also helped strengthen my confidence in myself and my ideas. The reservations I felt in being responsible for creating programming from scratch quickly turned to excitement with the support and encouragement from Tang staff. Thanks largely to this internship, I now feel assured in finding a career that puts into practice my love for art and social justice.