The New York Times - USA (2020-10-10)

The new trustees’ alliance is riding a
wave of heightened awareness about the
importance of better representation that
has reached city government, museums
and — most recently — commercial art gal-
leries.
The steering committee, which met for
the first time last month, includes promi-

nent collectors such as AC Hudgins (who
serves on the board of the Museum of Mod-
ern Art), Denise Gardner (Art Institute of
Chicago) and Troy Carter (Los Angeles
County Museum of Art).
Often the only Black people on the boards
of major museums, these trustees are pool-
ing their efforts to help institutions identify
new talent and insist on diverse perspec-
tives to better reflect the communities they
serve.
“We can begin to hold institutions ac-
countable,” said Raymond J. McGuire, who
serves on the boards of the Whitney and the
Studio Museum in Harlem. “It’s really in-
tended to be transformative.”
The alliance’s mission, as articulated in a
written summary of the committee’s first
meeting on Sept. 18, is “to increase inclusion
of Black artists, perspectives and narra-
tives in U.S. cultural institutions by: ad-
dressing inequalities in staffing and leader-
ship; combating marginalized communi-
ties’ lack of presence in exhibitions and pro-
gramming; and incorporating diversity
into the institution’s culture.”
The organization, which is scheduled to
meet again this month, also plans to amass
and make available data that can help insti-
tutions take a hard look at themselves, simi-
lar to last year’s Williams College study of
18 major U.S. museums, which found that 85
percent of artists in their collections were

white and that 87 percent were men.

Similarly, the Andrew W. Mellon Founda-

tion found last year that the percentage of

nonwhite curators had risen to 16 percent in

2018 from 12 percent in 2015, though little

change had been made at the executive

leadership level.

“It’s not enough to just call out the prob-

lem,” said Gaby Sulzberger, a private equity

executive who last year joined the board of

the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is

serving as a chairwoman of the new group.

“We want to be part of the solution.”

The Mellon Foundation and the Ford

Foundation are financially supporting the

work of the alliance. “There has always

been a token on these boards,” said Darren

Walker, the president of Ford who last year

became the first Black trustee at the Na-

tional Gallery, where the Guston show was

to open in June. “Tokenism is no longer ac-

ceptable and there will be an internal mech-

anism that holds the museums account-

able.”

Mr. Walker, who was a guest at the steer-

ing committee’s first meeting and last

month issued a statement in support of the

Guston postponement, said in an interview

that the issues raised by that exhibition are

systemic.

“This is not about Guston, it’s about mu-

seums needing to change,” Mr. Walker said.

“In the past, the National Gallery curators

would never have consulted with Black

staff members before doing a show they

might consider problematic. In the future,

that’s going to need to happen.”

Thelma Golden, the director and chief cu-

rator of the Studio Museum, who was also a

guest at the committee’s first meeting,

called the alliance “incredibly important,

significant and necessary to the work of in-

stitutional transformation.”

The alliance initially plans to concentrate

on building up the number of Black board

members, but will also address the scarcity

of Black artists in collections and Black cu-

rators on staff.

“It feels as if there is real power in coming

together and sharing resources,” said Vic-

toria Rogers, another chairwoman of the al-

liance, who serves on the board of the

Brooklyn Museum.

While they hope their efforts benefit all

people of color, the committee members

said, for now they are focused on Black peo-

ple because, as Ms. Sulzberger put it,

“That’s who we are.” The group also aims to

eventually expand beyond art museums to

include other cultural institutions.

“Boards of directors are all working very

hard to define priorities for their institu-

tions, but nobody’s ever done this on the

scale it is happening now,” Ms. Joyner said.

“This group will do a lot for museums

across this country in helping to define a

road map.”

CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1

‘It’s not enough to just call

out the problem. We want
to be part of the solution.’

Black Trustees Unite to Diversify Art Museums

From left: Gaby Sulzberger,

Raymond J. McGuire, Pamela

J. Joyner, Denise Gardner, AC

Hudgins and Troy Carter.

FROM LEFT: REBECCA SMEYNE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES; JOHNNY NUNEZ/GETTY IMAGES FOR NAACP LDF; CHARLEY GALLAY/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE J. PAUL GETTY TRUST; WHITTEN SABBATINI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES;

STEFANIE KEENAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE CALARTS REDCAT GALA 2019; MATT WINKELMEYER/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE RUSH PHILANTHROPIC ART FOUNDATION

C4 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2020

LONDON — Soon after Prime Minister Boris

Johnson’s recent televised announcement

of new coronavirus restrictions, a man who

looked very like the prime minister stood in

front of a very similar lectern on one chan-

nel here.

“We are saying, in regards to baking, if

you must bake in a tent, bake in a tent, but

please don’t bake in a tent,” said the imper-

sonator wearing a messy blond wig, Matt

Lucas, mocking governmental restrictions

often criticized by the British public for be-

ing confusing and contradictory. Lucas, in

his new role as a host of “The Great British

Baking Show,” then asked two “experts” to

settle a debate that has divided Britain for

decades: the right way to pronounce scone.

“Scohn,” said Paul Hollywood, a “Baking

Show” judge. “Scon,” replied Prue Leith,

Hollywood’s fellow judge.

A reactive political sketch like this may be

par for the course on a show like “Saturday

Night Live!” but as the opening to the sea-

son premiere of “The Great British Baking

Show” (or “The Great British Bake Off” as it

is known in its home market), it evidenced

the beloved show’s evolution during the

decade it’s been on the air.

While many shows feel tired as they ap-

proach 100 episodes of the same formula,

“Baking Show” has managed to balance its

status as the “ultimate comfort show” with

increasingly quirky elements like Lucas’s

coronavirus briefing sketch to avoid getting

stale.

Since its premiere in 2010, the competi-

tion show has twice gotten new hosts, once

had a judge replaced and has changed net-

works (controversially, from the ad-free

BBC to the commercial Channel 4). And yet,

its structure — three baking challenges per

episode, completed inside a tent in the

grounds of a British country house — has

remained unchanged, even in the current

season, which was filmed during the sum-

mer, when the U.K. was in lockdown.

“Baking Show” remains one of Britain’s

most popular programs, and nearly 11 mil-

lion people watched the first episode of the

new season last month, Channel 4’s highest

rating since 1985. A Netflix distribution deal

has given the show an appointment-to-view

appeal in the United States, with episodes

dropping only three days after they air in

Britain.

“It is a television series, but we always

try to think of it as an event, almost like a

Wimbledon, or an Olympics,” said Richard

McKerrow, the co-creator and executive

producer of “Baking Show,” in a phone in-

terview.

Always eagerly anticipated, the new sea-

son of “Baking Show” this year provided a

welcome return to some version of normal-

ity at a time when television, and life, feel

anything but. Most new television shows

have had to adjust to social distancing, or

have simply delayed production. But “Bak-

ing Show” looks and feels the same, return-

ing to screens only a few weeks later than

expected. It was filmed in “probably one of

the biggest bubbles in the U.K.,” according

to Hollywood — contestants and crew iso-

lated for nine days before filming began and

were tested for the coronavirus multiple

times. During the weeks of the competition,

bakers were permitted to return home only

when they left the show.

This meant that the large crew could

work safely within the relatively small

space of the tent. It also meant bakers could

still help one another through crises and

Hollywood was able to offer bakers a hand-

shake, arguably the highest praise on “Bak-

ing Show.”

“Me and my friends were actually a lot

more excited to watch it this year because it

was something that was quite normal,” said

Leo Meaney, a London-based project man-

ager and “Baking Show” fan, in a phone in-

terview.

“I think there was a yearning to get back

to normality, and the ‘Baking Show’ was the

comfort blanket,” said Hollywood.

This doesn’t mean that the current sea-

son has been without criticism. In the first

“showstopper” challenge of the year, the

bakers had to build cake busts of their fa-

vorite celebrities, which saw a convincing

David Attenborough and a haphazard im-

pression of David Bowie. Some viewers felt

that the challenges were getting increas-

ingly wacky and far away from testing the

contestants’ baking skills.

“Me and my friends were going, ‘No, how

is that even physically possible, to make a

bust of someone that inspires you?’ ” said

Meaney.

For this season, one of the show’s hosts,

Sandi Toksvig, was replaced by Lucas, who

had recently been embroiled in a contro-

versy surrounding the use of blackface in

his previous TV show, “Little Britain.”

There has been far less criticism, howev-

er, than there was of the 2019 season of

“Baking Show.” Last year, complaints about

cruel judges and overly complicated chal-

lenges, as well as the removal of two popu-

lar contestants in a surprise double elimina-

tion, led many viewers to feel the show had

lost its way.

McKerrow accepts the criticism as valid:

“I think we would hold our hands up and

say, last year’s show could have been better,

and that’s why an enormous set of effort has

gone into addressing that,” he said.

This year, as in the past, the bakers offer a

picture of Britain’s diverse population.

Watching is like “supporting your favorite

team in the Premiership, you support your

baker,” says Hollywood. Bakers also be-

come beloved for their quirks. Henry Bird, a

contestant from the 2019 season, developed

a following for wearing a shirt and tie each

episode despite his youth, while Rowan

Williams, who was just eliminated from the

show, became a favorite for continuing to

drink tea during stressful moments, as well

as for his elaborate waistcoat collection.

And while some bakers have gone on to

have established media careers, such as the

Season 6 winner Nadiya Hussain and the

Season 8 favorite Liam Charles (now a

judge for the junior version), many of the

bakers return to their previous lives, a rar-

ity on reality television.

“I think what made it brilliant in the be-

ginning was that you found people who

cared more about the baking than they did

about being on television,” said McKerrow,

recalling that in the earliest days of filming,

he looked around the tent and noticed the

bakers were not getting distracted by the

cameras. As the seasons have progressed,

he’s seen a lot of people “who possibly are

trying to be in the show as TV wannabes,

and we’re so trying to make sure that does-

n’t happen.”

“Baking Show” has returned as many

people in both Britain and the United States

have been baking their way through lock-

down. For the five months she was unable to

see her grandchildren, Jackie Heaton baked

with them virtually. “It was just a godsend

for me,” she said in a phone interview. Now

that the “Baking Show” is back, so is the

bake-along group Heaton helps run on Twit-

ter. “It’s really good that they are actually

doing what a lot of us are doing at home,”

she said of the new season.

During the lockdown, like many, Holly-

wood turned to making banana bread. See-

ing so many people online baking made him

realize that it “has always been part of the

DNA of the U.K.”

“It’s part of what the British are, we are

good at baking,” he said. “International

Bake Off, that’s what I say. Challenge them

all.”

‘Baking Show’ Offers Extra-Sweet Normality

The hosts and judges of “The

Great British Baking Show,”

clockwise, from left: Prue Leith,

Matt Lucas, Paul Hollywood and

Noel Fielding.

Filmed in a quarantine bubble,

the latest season of the popular

British competition program

maintains its charms.

By SCOTT BRYAN

MARK BOURDILLON/LOVE PRODUCTIONS