The Clark Atlanta University Art Museum is one of 20 U.S. art museums that will receive funding from the Walton Family Foundation and Ford Foundation as a part of the Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative (DAMLI), an effort to increase diversity in curatorial and management staff at art museums nationally.
Dr. Maurita Poole, director of the CAU Art Museum (CAUAM), will use the $139,432 allotted to the institution to establish the Tina Dunkley Fellowship in American Art to not only commemorate the legacy of the art museum’s curator emerita, Tina Dunkley, but also to train and prepare the next generation of students of color who aspire to be art museum directors and leaders. The two-year fellowship will be a joint post-baccalaureate program with Kennesaw State University’s Zuckerman Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.
“I was pleasantly surprised that the Ford and Walton Family Foundations decided to fund the DAMLI Tina Dunkley Fellowship in American Art,” Poole said. “Their decision to fund this project – as well as The Zuckerman Museum of Art and The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art’s willingness to form a partnership with Clark Atlanta University Art Museum – suggests to me that there is now a true desire to transform the landscape of museum leadership.”
Within the last five years, Poole says there have been ongoing discussions among museum directors and arts organizations about how to change the museum leadership landscape. However, change has been gradual.
“Even if they open up job opportunities, the pool of applicants is not diverse enough for us to diversify the profession because people don’t have the training,” Poole said. “They don’t even consider it as a possibility even if they visit museums.”
Poole hopes that the creation of the Dunkley Fellowship at CAUAM will create a pipeline and become an avenue for students of color who would like to become involved in the management of museum or art galleries, but who may not know where to begin.
The fellowship will provide two recent graduates with an in-depth training in both museum practice and the field of American art. Dunkley Fellows will also receive mentorship from high-level museum management and curatorial staff, participate in the development of exhibitions, work with museum collections, conduct research and complete a final project.
