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[Kerry James Marshall: On Museums]

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You walk into the museum, and the way the[br]museums are structured--

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especially the kind of great encyclopedic[br]museums,

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where you could come in, and your introduction[br]to the art world

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is through the primitive and the ancient collections.

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And then you start moving up the stairs, and[br]you go into the...

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you can get to medieval European work.

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And then you go all the way through from the[br]14th century, the 15th century,

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the 16th century, the 17th century, the [br]18th century, the 19th century,

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All of that stuff is magnificent stuff.

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It’s all good. You know, we all like it.

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But you become...

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At some point you become acutely aware of[br]your absence in the whole kind of

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historical timeline that develops this kind[br]of narrative of mastery.

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We take it for granted that this is just the[br]way art history has been structured.

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It's like, the people who make stuff--

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and that's the people who make the best stuff...

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You know, they are all Europeans.

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They are all Europeans.

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And when do other people start to come in[br]to the field?

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Well, only after they have been dominated[br]and colonized by Europeans.

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And then what do they start to do?

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They started to do what the Europeans were[br]doing.

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If there were as many institutions like the[br]Museum of Modern Art,

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like the Whitney Museum, like the Metropolitan[br]Museum--

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if there was as many institutions that people[br]were clamoring to get into

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that were run by Black people and Chinese[br]people and everybody,

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then this wouldn’t be an issue at all.

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It is only an issue because there’s only[br]this one set of institutions

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that everybody recognizes as being the best,

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and you know that you’re not controlling[br]them,

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so you got to keep asking the people who are[br]controlling them to let you in.