{"id":11938,"date":"2022-04-01T19:58:31","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T19:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=11938"},"modified":"2022-04-04T01:31:37","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T01:31:37","slug":"slamming-the-door-open-the-diverse-expectations-of-renee-brummell-franklin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=11938","title":{"rendered":"Slamming the Door Open: The Diverse Expectations of Renee Brummell Franklin"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Slamming the Door Open<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n

The Diverse Expectations of Renee Brummell Franklin<\/h3>\r\n
by D. Amari Jackson<\/pre>\r\n
Renee Brummell Franklin is not an artist.<\/p>\r\n
But she sure sounds like one.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cI decided that I would have a chocolate party at my house for about six people that work for me,\u201d recalls Franklin, an art administrator who, several years back, invited her coworkers from the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM). \u201cSo when you think of chocolate, you think of sweet candy. But, from the point they got to my house to the appetizers, to the salad, to the main course, to the dessert, to the after-dinner drink, everything <\/em>had some kind of chocolate in it, from very bitter chocolate to very sweet chocolate, from dark chocolate to white chocolate to milk chocolate.\u201d To this day, notes Franklin, the successful event has \u201ca lot of people asking me, \u2018when am I gonna do that again?\u2019 And I tell them, \u2018you have no idea how long it took me to research the recipes and cook everything.’\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
Such detail, preparation, and commitment has served Franklin well. For over two decades, the Easton, Maryland native has donned a series of roles and responsibilities at SLAM, all geared toward improving the museum\u2019s inclusion and engagement of diverse communities within the St. Louis area. First joining the museum as coordinator of community outreach programs in 1998, Franklin has consistently championed efforts to expand SLAM\u2019s reach while forging sustainable relationships with the surrounding community. Along the way, she has cofounded or facilitated several successful initiatives at the museum, including the Art with Us youth residency program; the Teen Assistant Program, providing mentorship and summer employment; and the Friends of African American Art Collectors Circle, a collaborative devoted to expanding awareness of African-American art. Franklin also supervises the Romare Bearden Graduate Museum Fellowship, a national model for increasing underrepresented professionals working in museums.<\/p>\r\n
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Renee front center with Bearden Fellows, 2018<\/p><\/div>\r\n
\u201cRenee\u2019s impact is immeasurable,\u201d says Sherri Williams, a 2009-10 Bearden Fellow who now works in education and program administration at the National Gallery of Art. During her Fellowship at SLAM, she was mentored and supervised by Franklin. \u201cRenee is reshaping that museum, internally and externally, setting it on a path to be more relevant and responsive to its constituents,\u201d acknowledges Williams. In addition, \u201cThe ripple effect of her work with the Romare Bearden Graduate Fellowship is astounding. She has mentored generations of museum professionals of color who are agents of sustainable and necessary change at their institutions.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
In December 2020, after a year of extraordinary racial tumult on a national level, SLAM promoted Franklin to chief diversity officer, a new position increasing institutional accountability on issues of diversity, equity, and access. Though the position was novel\u2014one created around Franklin from a report on inclusion drafted by the museum\u2019s board of commissioners\u2014the mission was not.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cI have a new job title but the work that I was doing, and continue to do, has not changed,\u201d clarifies Franklin, pointing out that her \u201cjob is now institutionalized<\/em>. In other words, I\u2019ve always been here to help the museum be more inclusive, and it was okay to have me do so as the community partnership person or as the outreach coordinator.\u201d But now, continues Franklin, with \u201cthis new title in the director\u2019s office, I feel it\u2019s institutionalized. It’s more systemic and, perhaps, when I bring forth initiatives, there is now the expectation that everyone is on board.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cSo the expectations have changed,\u201d adds Franklin. \u201cMy job has not.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
Franklin has expectations of herself. An avid reader, researcher, and world traveler, she holds two master\u2019s degrees\u2014one in education, another in business administration\u2014volunteers on several prestigious boards and committees; is a founding member of the National Alliance of African American Art Support Groups; and has received numerous commendations, including the Grand Center Visionary Award for Outstanding Arts Professional. \u201cI have thought many times about going back and getting an art history degree,\u201d reveals Franklin. \u201cBut, actually, since I\u2019ve been here close to 25 years now, I still think what I bring to the art museum is the average, innocent eyes of looking at art. I\u2019m not looking at it as an expert would look at art\u2014that\u2019s what I have curators for\u2014but, rather, to engage the average person who does not <\/em>have that art history degree,\u201d she stresses, reiterating \u201cthey are looking at art like I look at art.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
Franklin\u2019s innocent look at art began as a child in Easton, MD where her father\u2019s hobby was designing and \u201cdressing up\u201d Harley Davidson motorcycles for competitions, and her mom \u2018mixed colors\u2019 in the kitchen. \u201cGrowing up in a Black household, everything is art as so much of your life revolves around it,\u201d offers Franklin, explaining how her mother coordinated meals by color. \u201cYou\u2019ve got too many yellows,\u201d she recounts, with a laugh. \u201cYou can\u2019t have macaroni and cheese and<\/em> corn, you need something green or something orange on that plate, you know?\u201d Franklin further qualifies this homegrown process. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t call it the art of art museums but, rather, the art of life, the art of just appreciating your aunt who\u2019s making a quilt or your aunt who makes all of her clothes. So it was that kind of art.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
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Renee 6 years old<\/p><\/div>\r\n
It was during her youth that Franklin developed her passion for travel. Upon graduating from Easton High School, where she\u2019d spent many afterschool hours working as a babysitter for a little girl who\u2019d taken a liking to her, Franklin travelled with the girl\u2019s family to France to vacation for five weeks at their chateau outside of Paris. \u201cMy parents were not college educated, but they worked so hard, and the only thing I had to pay for was my airline ticket,\u201d remembers Franklin, noting there \u201cwas not a several hundred dollars sitting around for Renee to go off to Paris for five weeks. Plus, I always worked during the summer, so that meant I wasn\u2019t gonna be able to work to make any money. But my parents saw that it was important to me, and we figured it out.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cIt really was a turning point for me because I now travel internationally all the time,\u201d acknowledges Franklin, who has journeyed to numerous African nations, Brazil, Spain, Italy, and Cuba, among others. \u201cSo I think that just seeing there was something beyond my small town really did make a difference in my life.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\r\n
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Renee Egypt, 2015<\/p><\/div>\r\n
Franklin initially attended Hampton University in Virginia before transferring to Towson University in her home state and graduating with a BS in marketing and business administration. She began working for the Gillette company, and then Johnson & Johnson before getting married and recognizing that her relatives who were teachers had summers off to be with their kids. \u201cSo I told my husband, I think I\u2019m going to get my master\u2019s in education and go back and teach,\u201d says Franklin, who taught for a short period before realizing that the traditional teaching process and its associated bureaucracy was not for her. She ended up working for a small children\u2019s museum in St. Louis where she helped expose kids to cultures from around the world. There, she engaged with a representative from SLAM who told her about a new position at the museum that \u201cseemed like a great combination of education and marketing.\u201d Franklin followed up and, in 1998, became SLAM\u2019s first Outreach Coordinator. \u201cBasically, it was a position to engage community for the museum, as the job was predominantly to connect the outside of the museum to the inside of the museum.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
Franklin has been making such connections ever since.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cRenee has helped a lot of artists in St. Louis and all over,\u201d offers artist and educator, Lamerol Gatewood, a friend and colleague of two decades. Through a mutual friend, the painter first encountered Franklin while she was doing audience development for SLAM two decades back. \u201cShe was all over the community, north, south, east, and west St. Louis, so that\u2019s how I met her. Over the years we\u2019ve built a very good relationship,\u201d reports Gatewood, pointing out how Franklin has \u201creally assisted me in regard to how to maneuver inside the museum.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
He cites Franklin\u2019s role in facilitating the recent publication of his book, \u201cLamerol A. Gatewood\u201d The Energy Series and The Abstract Energy Of Sound \u2013 2009-2019<\/em>, and her pivotal part in getting late collector and St. Louis native Ronald Ollie and his wife, Monique, to give SLAM a collection of 81 works by Black abstractionists in 2017. \u201cThat\u2019s how vital she is to our community,\u201d stresses Gatewood, further characterizing Franklin as \u201cvery approachable. You know how some individuals that are in institutions are not approachable, but I don\u2019t find it in her, and I\u2019ve been around for a while, trust<\/em> me.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
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Renee, Museum Diversity Conference, 2005<\/p><\/div>\r\n
The historic Ollie donation was largely due to Franklin\u2019s innovation, desire to educate, and tireless networking. The Friends of African American Art Collector\u2019s Circle she started was featured by the International Review of African American Art<\/em> on their educational trip to New York and, in that same edition, was a piece by Ollie who lived in New Jersey and was a board member at the Newark Museum. Ollie reached out to Franklin. \u201cHe said he didn\u2019t know that his hometown of St. Louis was doing so much with art,\u201d she recalls of the conversation two decades back. \u201cWe just kept in touch\u201d over the years and, \u201cultimately, some 20 years later, he gave us 81 works of art by African-American artists, the largest donation we\u2019ve ever had by a Black collector. So it\u2019s about connecting the dots and you never know where those dots are going to take you.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
When it comes to the complex dynamics of race, diversity, and inclusion, Franklin acknowledges that she does not know where the future is going to take us. \u201cI kind of wonder what this field will look like five years from now,\u201d she offers, promoting that \u201cmy hope is that museums and organizations see the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I\u2019m not convinced of that yet, but I see the glass as half full, not half empty.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cMy mantra has always been the same, that we\u2019ll be a much better institution when we\u2019ve become more inclusive,\u201d continues Franklin, on SLAM. \u201cBut I think it was always program-focused, and the big difference now is that staffing has moved up as a priority. I’ve always believed that, you change your board, you change your staff, then you\u2019re going to change what\u2019s on the walls because you\u2019ve got a diversity of people around the table making those decisions.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
Given her impact on SLAM and the St. Louis community thus far, Franklin\u2019s ongoing actions and decisions will certainly play a part in the institution to come.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cI think what I am most proud of, over my 20 years at the museum, is that colleagues seek me out for my advice and expertise and that has allowed me, both internally and externally, to keep my mantra going,\u201d reveals Franklin, advancing that \u201cthere\u2019s a better way to do this. Or, I won\u2019t say a better way\u2026 but there\u2019s a different<\/em> way to do this.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cAnd, perhaps, we might try it a different way.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
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Renee with Bearden Fellow, Asmaa Walton, 2020<\/p><\/div>\r\n
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