MCA Chicago x OTV Partnership Engagement Letter
“The following letter was written to MCA Chicago on March 12, 2021 in response to the ongoing conversations amplified by MCA Accountable, the Chicago-artists community and other key stakeholders in pursuit of more institutional transparency. This letter is an opportunity for us to build equitable bridges between the community and MCA. It is not a demand but more so a tough invitation to learn how we can restore justice and create space for healing to begin.”
MCA Chicago x OTV | Open Television Partnership Engagement Letter
March 12, 2021
Dear MCA Chicago (Attn: January Parkos-Arnall),
In late April 2020 OTV | Open Television launched our Engagement Strategy, a framework for how people can engage OTV in ways that align with our mission of advancing intersectionality. The heart of this strategy is our Brave Space Agreement that we ask all partners to agree on. All of the agreements are important, but, for institutional partners, the most important one is also the most challenging:
We ask partners to “agree to struggle against racism, ableism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, shame, and other harmful systems.”
OTV understands that resisting systemic oppression is a process. We take a long view of this intergenerational effort. Still, we believe every action in the present guides our collective futures. By “struggle” we mean that sincere, concerted and consistent effort must be taken--by every individual in our community or working for an organization with whom we want to partner--to resist the ideas, norms, processes, values and ultimately the systems that were designed to marginalize people based on how they identify. These norms, processes and values are difficult to resist because they are systemic. They are embedded in the fabric of our society. “Business as usual” is almost always harmful because most powerful, enduring institutions were established at a time when not every life had equal opportunity. The fault precedes every individual alive today, but every individual has a responsibility to try to change the way business is done, every day.
We believe the media has a powerful and undervalued role in healing our systems. Storytelling gathers community around a shared set of ideas, values and politics. OTV’s stories are better equipped to challenge oppressive ideas, norms, processes and values, but only if their containers--our platform, alongside the people and organizations we partner with to promote it--are equally committed to this admittedly utopian goal.
Since 2017 OTV has been honored to partner with MCA Chicago for our premiere event, OTV Tonight in service of this mission. Now that we are a fully funded organization and perceived as an institution by our community, we need to lead and deepen our standards for engagement. Because we launched our engagement strategy after the last OTV Tonight, and in light of recent actions by the MCA that have harmed people in our community, we believe the time is ripe to elevate and deepen this partnership.
In service of advancing our mission and engagement strategy, we propose the following as conditions for OTV Tonight to be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
We ask the MCA to be transparent about their processes, their constraints and capabilities when in conversation with artists, staff and community about actions they have taken that have harmed people in our community. We ask for this transparency in, at least, all private communication, and, even better, in public communication. We believe this will not only serve the artist-activists trying to act in solidarity with those harmed, but also help the MCA, so those both outside and inside the institution are aware of what is possible, what is not possible, and why.
We invite the MCA to a public conversation to be livestreamed on OTV, and potentially streamed simultaneously on OTV and the MCA’s social media, to offer insight into how the MCA operates and why decisions were made. We again believe this not only helps those outside the institution better understand how institutions work so they can be more effective in healing our systems but also help the MCA in its efforts to communicate with the public.
We offer that OTV co-founder and Northwestern professor Aymar Jean Christian, OTV Executive Director Elijah McKinnon or a restorative justice expert be selected by OTV to moderate this public conversation.
We offer that artist-activists be invited to participate in this conversation to ask questions and give comments, in a format both parties mutually agree upon.
We ask that the MCA invite at least two staff members participate: the Director, Director of Curatorial Strategy, and/or curators and other current or former staff members of color.
If the MCA chooses Directors to speak, the conversation will focus on institutional transparency and accountability.
If the MCA chooses curators of color to speak, we suggest the conversation focus on how the MCA is trying to advance equity and inclusion and the challenges in doing that.
If former staff members of color are asked to speak, we suggest the conversation focus on past efforts of the MCA to advance equity and the challenges in doing that.
We ask the MCA board to discuss and commit to a capital campaign to re-hire former staff and/or increase diversity and representation of our communities at all levels of the MCA team. The stock market has reached new highs over the last year and there is a class of individuals whose assets have grown as many people in our communities face sickness or death, loss of income, skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety and other health issues as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. We believe a commitment to equity must involve the redistribution of capital to those most in need.
We intentionally frame these as asks and not demands because we believe in calling our partners in before calling them out. We are not pulling our work from The Long Dream. We believe that we all have a role in cultivating a better world but some of us may need a little push, a reminder of our interdependence. The MCA will survive the events of the past year. Many in our community have not or will not survive. The more we work to correct these inequalities and the mistakes of the past, the more we will all thrive.
In solidarity,
Elijah McKinnon & Aymar Jèan Christian
OTV | Open Television Co-founders
“As of April 1 3, this letter was received warmly by partners at the MCA and as part of an ongoing dialogue in response to calls for accountability from OTV and other artists, staff, and stakeholders, the MCA’s website now includes a Call to Action page sharing more about where they are on their journey. Additionally, we have engaged in several conversations around the ways OTV can support more equitable solutions on their quest towards transparency and restoration.
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Image Courtesy of MCA’s website
From the MCA: The MCA believes deeply in the values of inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility, or IDEA, and we are committed to enacting structural change by turning our beliefs into actions. The following is a cumulative list of action steps we’ve taken based on our commitment to inclusion and equity. We created this list to publicly share our actions with staff, members, board members, artists, our audience, and our community. These actions will be updated regularly. If you have comments that you would like to share with us about our actions, please send us a message at calltoaction@mcachicago.org.