November 20, 2019

Baltimore’s Largest Museum Is Doing Something Bold and Brave, and a Lot of Conservative Men Are Gonna Hate It

“To rectify centuries of imbalance, you have to do something radical.”

Amy Sherald. Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between (detail). 2018. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Purchase by exchange with funds provided by the Pearlstone Family Fund and through a partial gift of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. © 2019 Amy Sherald.

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How can a museum challenge decades of gender imbalance in what it displays to the public? The Baltimore Museum of Art has a plan for 2020: Every painting, sculpture, and photograph it purchases for its permanent collection will be by women.

“We’re attempting to correct our own canon,” museum director Christopher Bedford told the Baltimore Sun. “We recognize the blind spots we have had in the past, and we are taking the initiative to do something about them.”

Every museum should do this, said Bianca Kovic, incoming executive director of the New York–based National Association of Women Artists.

Among the artwork the Baltimore museum has purchased: Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between, a 2018 painting by Amy Sherald, best known for her portrait of Michelle Obama in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

Bedford said the Baltimore museum had no choice: “To rectify centuries of imbalance, you have to do something radical.”

Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week: 

Her mind worked differently. When she awoke from surgery, Oscar-winning actor Mary Steenburgen couldn’t stop thinking about music. Everything was music. She wrote music and lyrics incessantly. And wouldn’t stop playing the accordion. Her family was worried. “I couldn’t get my mind into any other mode,” she acknowledged. Years later, refusing to trade on her stardom, she wrote songs using a pseudonym and landed a contract on the strength of her creativity, including one of the best movie songs of the year. (Indie Wire)

A helping hand. He was the only person working at Waffle House that night, after his expected help didn’t arrive—so first one customer, then another, began helping the employee, named Ben, with orders, dishes, coffee, and table cleaning. “It was just one of the most wild instances of really, really cool people just coming together,” said customer Ethan Crispo, who recorded the late-night scene at the Birmingham, Alabama, restaurant. The chain said it was grateful for the emergency support and urged one helper to fill out a job application. (al.com)

Therapy llamas. Readers, I made a vow that I wouldn’t clutter Recharge with cute pandas or with puppies that found their way back home. But I never said anything about the three 300-pound llamas that stroll through a Texas nursing home, getting petted by residents and pausing for selfies. One therapy llama, Knock, has walked to a hospice patient’s bed and waited while the patient reaches out for him. “It’s taken me several visits,’’ said llama owner Carol Rutledge, “to be able to get through it without getting emotional.” (New York Times)

I’ll leave you with this image of what the Interior Department’s Twitter feed calls alpenglow at the Alabama Hills National Scenic Area in California. Please send links or tips for possible Recharge items to recharge@motherjones.com. Have a glowing week, and thanks for reading.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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