Re: [Frameworks] Sally Berger, film curator, fired at MoMA

[Robert Cargni Mitchell]

Was just reading thisand thought.
http://theartnewspaper.com/news/museums/the-party-s-over-as-new-york-s-top-museums-feel-the-pinch/

Robert

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-Original Message-
From: FrameWorks [mailto:frameworks-boun...@jonasmekasfilms.com] On Behalf Of 
Fred Camper
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2016 1:44 PM
To: Experimental Film Discussion List <frameworks@jonasmekasfilms.com>
Subject: Re: [Frameworks] Sally Berger, film curator, fired at MoMA

I understand and agree. And I hate all these confidentiality agreements
-- we should get the IRS to require transparency of not for profits, which, as 
a result of their tax exempt status, operate in effect with huge subsidies from 
all of us.

None of this, however, encourages me to want to sign an online petition without 
more information.

Fred Camper
Chicago

On 6/21/2016 7:23 AM, Chris Kennedy wrote:
> "At the very least, it seems to me that someone who cares about this 
> curator should try to do the work a good journalist would do and get 
> to the bottom of the situation. An authoritative analysis that could 
> show the firing was really wrong might actually help." -Fred Camper
>
> That's a nice idea, but journalists at least have institutional protection 
> against libel laws. Any organization even half as  big as MoMA has a large HR 
> dept and is lawyered up to prevent the bottom of the situation from ever 
> being reached. In short, no one besides Berger's immediate confidants and 
> those that did the firing are ever going to know what happened. An online 
> petition is likely all that anyone can do, unless local NYers are willing to 
> boycott the MoMA.
>
> Chris
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Re: [Frameworks] Sally Berger, film curator, fired at MoMA

[Fred Camper]

I understand and agree. And I hate all these confidentiality agreements 
-- we should get the IRS to require transparency of not for profits, 
which, as a result of their tax exempt status, operate in effect with 
huge subsidies from all of us.


None of this, however, encourages me to want to sign an online petition 
without more information.


Fred Camper
Chicago

On 6/21/2016 7:23 AM, Chris Kennedy wrote:

"At the very least, it seems to me that someone who cares about this
curator should try to do the work a good journalist would do and get to
the bottom of the situation. An authoritative analysis that could show
the firing was really wrong might actually help." -Fred Camper

That's a nice idea, but journalists at least have institutional protection 
against libel laws. Any organization even half as  big as MoMA has a large HR 
dept and is lawyered up to prevent the bottom of the situation from ever being 
reached. In short, no one besides Berger's immediate confidants and those that 
did the firing are ever going to know what happened. An online petition is 
likely all that anyone can do, unless local NYers are willing to boycott the 
MoMA.

Chris
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Re: [Frameworks] Sally Berger, film curator, fired at MoMA

[chris bravo]

"An online petition is likely all that anyone can do"

there is a lot of energy here in NY to confront issues around sexism and
racism in curatorial practice. particularly at the moment there are people
trying to bring pressure to bear on Anne Pasternak, the Brooklyn Museum and
their cozy relationship with real estate developers. here are a couple good
projects off the top of my head (I am sure there are others) if people want
to get involved:

http://notanalternative.org
http://occupymuseums.org




On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 8:23 AM, Chris Kennedy 
wrote:

> "At the very least, it seems to me that someone who cares about this
> curator should try to do the work a good journalist would do and get to
> the bottom of the situation. An authoritative analysis that could show
> the firing was really wrong might actually help." -Fred Camper
>
> That's a nice idea, but journalists at least have institutional protection
> against libel laws. Any organization even half as  big as MoMA has a large
> HR dept and is lawyered up to prevent the bottom of the situation from ever
> being reached. In short, no one besides Berger's immediate confidants and
> those that did the firing are ever going to know what happened. An online
> petition is likely all that anyone can do, unless local NYers are willing
> to boycott the MoMA.
>
> Chris
> ___
> FrameWorks mailing list
> FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com
> https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
>



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Re: [Frameworks] Sally Berger, film curator, fired at MoMA

[Chris Kennedy]

"At the very least, it seems to me that someone who cares about this 
curator should try to do the work a good journalist would do and get to 
the bottom of the situation. An authoritative analysis that could show
the firing was really wrong might actually help." -Fred Camper

That's a nice idea, but journalists at least have institutional protection 
against libel laws. Any organization even half as  big as MoMA has a large HR 
dept and is lawyered up to prevent the bottom of the situation from ever being 
reached. In short, no one besides Berger's immediate confidants and those that 
did the firing are ever going to know what happened. An online petition is 
likely all that anyone can do, unless local NYers are willing to boycott the 
MoMA.

Chris 
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Re: [Frameworks] Sally Berger, film curator, fired at MoMA;

[Dave Tetzlaff]

Chris: Thanks for the clarification on Vaxxed/Tribeca. But it wasn't 'Tribeca 
recognizing that it needed to firm up its institutional character and to 
counter a reactionary push from powerful autocrats (De Niro)'. RDN bypassed the 
programmers to put Vaxxed on the schedule, and he alone pulled it out in 
reaction to the public heat in order to salvage Tribeca's reputation. It wasn't 
a move to shore up "institutional character" in terms of accountability, 
transparency, etc.

> Yanking a film because (as far as we know) a hypothetical compromise of 
> MOMA's emails, is super bad programming. we are all in agreeance on that, 
> right?

Well, compromised emails weren't the issue. Berger ≠ Hilary. According to the 
NYT: "Berger expressed concern in late January about screening the film after 
reading an article suggesting that any organization that did so risked 
retribution from North Korea." That retribution could have been any number of 
things, not just a Sony-leak type document dump. Anyway, whether or not it's 
'super bad programming' would depend on quite a few contextual factors -- 
including whether or not the film 'needed' the screening and the merit of 
whatever would be chosen to screen instead.

MoMA's 'exposure' isn't a matter of yielding to wing-nut trolls. If anything, 
by NOT screening a film critical of 'commies' Berger may have incited the wrath 
of the right and her 'bosses' may have been concerned with some pressure from 
those quarters. When I said MoMA faces a different dilemma than small indie 
forums, I meant only in the specific case of worrying about North Korea. MoMA's 
unique as an art film venue in being a big enough institution over-all to have 
valuable assets that could be targeted by cyber-terrorism and to have enough 
status to qualify as a symbolic target for reprisals. I mean, if North Korea 
messed with Facets, they'd look like petty clowns, not international badasses.

> Don't we want our cultural institutions to hold themselves accountable and to 
> be courageous?

Well, I'm not going to endorse no-consequences cowardice. But it's far from 
clear those were the stakes here, or who was the unaccountable coward if anyone 
was.

> If this were journalism, and a publication pulled a story because of outside 
> pressure, we would be going ballistic.

Not even remotely analogous. Besides, news outlets drop stories all the time 
for one reason or another, and we just never hear about it.

> With MoMA, we have to TRUST that they acting as they should.

It's a private organization, with no government funding, more or less run by 
the Rockefeller family. 'Trust us, or f**k off,' is SOP for 1%ers, yes?

Anyway, all of this is just to address your concerns over 'larger issues' 
hypotheticals. I doubt these were really central to Berger's dismissal, which 
smells like an internal power struggle, personality conflict or the like.
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Re: [Frameworks] Sally Berger, film curator, fired at MoMA;

[alena williams]

Dear all,

Following up on Fred's message, I would like to ask if anyone has more
detailed information about what happened at MoMA.

This is the New York Times article:

MoMA Apologizes for Dropping a Film Critical of North Korea
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/movies/moma-apologizes-for-dropping-a-film-critical-of-north-korea.html

And the Indiewire article:

MoMA Assistant Film Curator Sally Berger Fired After 30 Years
http://www.indiewire.com/2016/06/moma-assistant-film-curator-sally-berger-fired-rajendra-roy-1201688989/

However, it is unclear whether Sally's statements were done in consultation
with MoMA's legal department, for example (and then the dept head was
caught off-guard), or if something else happened. Either way, Larry
Kardish's and Rajendra Roy's comments suggest that more is going on here
and that this was perhaps an opportunistic firing. If anyone has further
information, please let us know.

In some ways, the bigger scandal is the glass ceiling at MoMA for veteran
female curators. How is it that Sally, after thirty years of service, was
never advanced to a full curator title? The same happened with Barbara
London.

In the last decade, men with less years under their belts (Roy, according
to the observer, arrived without a graduate degree in art or film:
http://observer.com/2014/04/the-chief-curator-of-film-at-moma-on-being-grounded-in-a-city-like-new-york/
), but with international careers have been positioned as departmental
heads, and in turn, the work of women like Sally has gone underappreciated
and undervalued by the institution.

While the current system does seem calibrated to work against curators who
stay local and invest their careers in a single institution, the busy work
of maintaining a collection (in addition to programming) is significant and
often extremely gendered at MoMA. I find the whole situation disturbing on
a number of levels.

Many thanks for any information,
Alena


On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 7:10 PM, Fred Camper  wrote:

> I agree in general with David's comments, without knowing much about the
> specifics of the situation, but I wanted to post a cautionary opinion about
> online petitions. I just about never sign them. First of all, they usually
> have no effect. Second, when they do, their effect is often a bad one. More
> importantly, mostly they refer to very complicated situations about which
> the signers know little. In the larger world,  We certainly know that major
> institutions have fired people for unjust,  idiotic or even evil reasons,
> but I also know of people who have been fired, or have had their lives
> ruined, through online petitions or shaming for offenses that perhaps did
> not deserved that. (A recent example,
> http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/shame-on-you-tube-1.3086407 )
>
> It's a big enough challenge to act well in one's own life, and to treat
> well the people with whom one comes in immediate contact, and Lord knows i
> have not always succeeded in doing that. It is all too easy to sign
> something in outrage over some situation or other. The issues about which I
> feel I know enough to have an opinion -- we should use less fossil fuels,
> for example -- are not going to be affected by online petitions anyway.
>
> Do we initiate and sign online petitions to make ourselves feel better, or
> to actually make things better? As one-liner pieces of wisdom go, I am a
> great admirer of Gandhi's "Be the change you want to see ion the world."
>
> At the very least, it seems to me that someone who cares about this
> curator should try to do the work a good journalist would do and get to the
> bottom of the situation. An authoritative analysis that could show the
> firing was really wrong might actually help.
>
> Fred Camper
> Chicago
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Re: [Frameworks] Sally Berger, film curator, fired at MoMA;

[Cari Machet]

agreed fred > how 'bout some actual facts regarding reality

On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 7:10 PM, Fred Camper  wrote:

> I agree in general with David's comments, without knowing much about the
> specifics of the situation, but I wanted to post a cautionary opinion about
> online petitions. I just about never sign them. First of all, they usually
> have no effect. Second, when they do, their effect is often a bad one. More
> importantly, mostly they refer to very complicated situations about which
> the signers know little. In the larger world,  We certainly know that major
> institutions have fired people for unjust,  idiotic or even evil reasons,
> but I also know of people who have been fired, or have had their lives
> ruined, through online petitions or shaming for offenses that perhaps did
> not deserved that. (A recent example,
> http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/shame-on-you-tube-1.3086407 )
>
> It's a big enough challenge to act well in one's own life, and to treat
> well the people with whom one comes in immediate contact, and Lord knows i
> have not always succeeded in doing that. It is all too easy to sign
> something in outrage over some situation or other. The issues about which I
> feel I know enough to have an opinion -- we should use less fossil fuels,
> for example -- are not going to be affected by online petitions anyway.
>
> Do we initiate and sign online petitions to make ourselves feel better, or
> to actually make things better? As one-liner pieces of wisdom go, I am a
> great admirer of Gandhi's "Be the change you want to see ion the world."
>
> At the very least, it seems to me that someone who cares about this
> curator should try to do the work a good journalist would do and get to the
> bottom of the situation. An authoritative analysis that could show the
> firing was really wrong might actually help.
>
> Fred Camper
> Chicago
>
> ___
> FrameWorks mailing list
> FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com
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>



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Re: [Frameworks] Sally Berger, film curator, fired at MoMA;

[Fred Camper]

I agree in general with David's comments, without knowing much about the 
specifics of the situation, but I wanted to post a cautionary opinion 
about online petitions. I just about never sign them. First of all, they 
usually have no effect. Second, when they do, their effect is often a 
bad one. More importantly, mostly they refer to very complicated 
situations about which the signers know little. In the larger world,  We 
certainly know that major institutions have fired people for unjust,  
idiotic or even evil reasons, but I also know of people who have been 
fired, or have had their lives ruined, through online petitions or 
shaming for offenses that perhaps did not deserved that. (A recent 
example, http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/shame-on-you-tube-1.3086407 )


It's a big enough challenge to act well in one's own life, and to treat 
well the people with whom one comes in immediate contact, and Lord knows 
i have not always succeeded in doing that. It is all too easy to sign 
something in outrage over some situation or other. The issues about 
which I feel I know enough to have an opinion -- we should use less 
fossil fuels, for example -- are not going to be affected by online 
petitions anyway.


Do we initiate and sign online petitions to make ourselves feel better, 
or to actually make things better? As one-liner pieces of wisdom go, I 
am a great admirer of Gandhi's "Be the change you want to see ion the 
world."


At the very least, it seems to me that someone who cares about this 
curator should try to do the work a good journalist would do and get to 
the bottom of the situation. An authoritative analysis that could show 
the firing was really wrong might actually help.


Fred Camper
Chicago
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Re: [Frameworks] Sally Berger, film curator, fired at MoMA;

[chris bravo]

just to clarify, I brought up the vaxxed situation because it also seems
like a moment where a big powerful institution (tribeca) was held
accountable for a REALLY bad programming decision (including vaxxed in the
festival). It seems (on the outside) like a moment when tribeca recognized
that it needed to firm up its institutional character and to counter a
reactionary push from powerful autocrats (de niro).

i agree that there seems like way more to this story than we know. However,
yanking a film because (as far as we know) a hypothetical compromise of
MOMA's emails, is super bad programming. we are all in agreeance on that,
right?

institutional character matters.

"presents a different dilemma for MoMA than it does for Facets or Film
Forum"

not really. the right-wing lunatics have largely left culture off their
kill lists for the time being. (probably because they did such a good job
destroying public art in the 80's lol). Don't we want our cultural
institutions to hold themselves accountable and to be courageous? If this
were journalism, and a publication pulled a story because of outside
pressure, we would be going ballistic. With MoMA, I think you can argue, it
matters EVEN MORE because there is no accountability process, no
transparency. We have to TRUST that they acting as they should.

"due diligence"

is taking reasonable steps to protects your servers. (definitely not the
responsibility (or concern) of the film programmer)



On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 10:22 AM, Dave Tetzlaff  wrote:

> > But, isn't censorship also a serious issue? Haven't we been fighting for
> institutions, especially cultural institutions to commit themselves to
> stand up for and support artists who are being attacked? Remember the dust
> up over the anti-vax movie that tried to screen at Tribeca? The argument
> seems the same: large, powerful, "important" cultural institutions need to
> get their shit together because its scary out there.
>
> WTF? Curators make programming choices. Most work does NOT get picked.
> That's not censorship. Yes, institutions should support artists under
> attack from the prevailing powers that be, but that's not the case here.
> Under the Sun has already been widely screened at festivals, received some
> commercial bookings, and generally been praised. North Korea is angry,
> though, which presents a different dilemma for MoMA than it does for Facets
> or Film Forum, as MoMA is big enough to be a  target for hacking that would
> actually harm the institution. MoMA drops one film from it's festival ––
> their loss since people want to see it -- out of due diligence for the
> museum's security, and the film just screens somewhere else.
>
> If anything, Sally Berger helped promote Under the Sun by activating the
> Streisand Effect. If her choice to drop the film from the Doc Fortnight was
> indeed the reason for her dismissal, as Su freidrich says, that's "insane!"
> Of course, that may just be an excuse for something else – and who knows
> what the real story might be...
>
> Vaxxed? Seriously? Andy Wakefield isn't a film artist. He's a scam artist,
> and public health menace who exploits kids with ASD for profit. Wakefield
> conned Grace Hightower and Robert De Niro, and RDN stuck Vaxxed onto the
> Tribeca schedule going around the programmers, (and against their
> objections, apparently). It was hardly 'censorship' when De Niro took it
> off the schedule since it already had a commercial distributor, and they
> had already lined up the commercial booking at the Angelika. The film
> demeans and stigmatizes neuro-atypical kids, is full of documented
> falsehoods and blatantly mendacious editing, and just plain sucks as
> documentary art. Again, there are only x-many screening slots at any venue,
> and the choice to show something is also a choice NOT to show something
> else. The real censorship in the works at Tribeca was some worthy
> documentary submitted through proper channels getting passed-over so De
> Niro could screen a piece of hack-work propaganda as a 'personal privilege'.
>
> Sheesh.
>
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Re: [Frameworks] Sally Berger, film curator, fired at MoMA;

[Dave Tetzlaff]

> But, isn't censorship also a serious issue? Haven't we been fighting for 
> institutions, especially cultural institutions to commit themselves to stand 
> up for and support artists who are being attacked? Remember the dust up over 
> the anti-vax movie that tried to screen at Tribeca? The argument seems the 
> same: large, powerful, "important" cultural institutions need to get their 
> shit together because its scary out there.

WTF? Curators make programming choices. Most work does NOT get picked. That's 
not censorship. Yes, institutions should support artists under attack from the 
prevailing powers that be, but that's not the case here. Under the Sun has 
already been widely screened at festivals, received some commercial bookings, 
and generally been praised. North Korea is angry, though, which presents a 
different dilemma for MoMA than it does for Facets or Film Forum, as MoMA is 
big enough to be a  target for hacking that would actually harm the 
institution. MoMA drops one film from it's festival –– their loss since people 
want to see it -- out of due diligence for the museum's security, and the film 
just screens somewhere else.

If anything, Sally Berger helped promote Under the Sun by activating the 
Streisand Effect. If her choice to drop the film from the Doc Fortnight was 
indeed the reason for her dismissal, as Su freidrich says, that's "insane!" Of 
course, that may just be an excuse for something else – and who knows what the 
real story might be...

Vaxxed? Seriously? Andy Wakefield isn't a film artist. He's a scam artist, and 
public health menace who exploits kids with ASD for profit. Wakefield conned 
Grace Hightower and Robert De Niro, and RDN stuck Vaxxed onto the Tribeca 
schedule going around the programmers, (and against their objections, 
apparently). It was hardly 'censorship' when De Niro took it off the schedule 
since it already had a commercial distributor, and they had already lined up 
the commercial booking at the Angelika. The film demeans and stigmatizes 
neuro-atypical kids, is full of documented falsehoods and blatantly mendacious 
editing, and just plain sucks as documentary art. Again, there are only x-many 
screening slots at any venue, and the choice to show something is also a choice 
NOT to show something else. The real censorship in the works at Tribeca was 
some worthy documentary submitted through proper channels getting passed-over 
so De Niro could screen a piece of hack-work propaganda as a 'personal 
privilege'.

Sheesh.

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