Garrels was confronted at the July 7 staff meeting, Artnet reported for the first time, about statements he had previously made about the museum’s collection priorities. At a time when museums are being asked to diversify their possessions beyond the work of Western artists, white men, an Instagram post on the @changethemuseum account claimed that a white senior curator (widely known as Garrels) had finished a presentation on recent acquisitions of works by artists of color saying, “Don’t worry, we will definitely continue to collect white artists.”
Garrels shared a similar sentiment while speaking publicly during a February 2020 panel at the FOG Design + Art Fair titled “Ways of Being Seen: Creating Visibility for Women in Art.”
“You have this huge mountain that you are climbing to reach parity, to reach balance. It is going to take a long time, ”he said. “The other thing I have to say, and I have reassured the artists, we will continue to gather white men. There are many excellent women artists, but there are also many good men working there as well. ”
When panel moderator Sarah Douglas, editor-in-chief of ARTnews, suggested that one approach would be to stop collecting works by white artists for a period of time (as the Baltimore Museum of Art announced it would do in 2020), Garrels said: ” I just don’t agree with that. That’s an alternative, a different kind of profile. “
At last week’s staff meeting, Garrels said avoiding white men’s work would amount to “reversing discrimination,” a phrase he later described as “an extremely poor choice of words.” A group of former museum employees organized under the name xSFM0MA quickly created a petition calling for Garrels to resign, writing: “Gary’s retirement from SFMOMA is non-negotiable. Considering his long tenure at this institution, we asked him how long his toxic white supremacist beliefs regarding race and equity have been leading his position as curators of museum content. ”
Garrels first worked at SFMOMA from 1993 to 2000 and returned to the museum in 2008 after curatorial positions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. As ARTnews previously reported, Garrels received a $ 500,000 interest-free mortgage loan from SFMOMA, approved by the museum’s board. (The museum’s director, Neal Benezra, received a $ 800,000 interest-free mortgage loan.)