Authentic leadership
#563
Abdul-Rahman Abdullah felt the big stick of the Murdoch press last week when he was pummelled in The Australian for a series of politically-charged social media posts. While most of the world seems to be willing to advertise their political views on these platforms, it’s a bit trickier when one is a member of the Council of a major government institution such as the National Gallery of Australia.
If you agree to sit on the NGA Council, it’s really not a good idea to post statements such as: “Israel is conducting a holocaust against the Palestinian people. End this sickness. End Zionism,” or “End the genocide, end apartheid, end Zionism.”
One would have to be incredibly callous not to feel horrified by the carnage in Gaza. But when hundreds of thousands of Israelis are protesting in the streets over Netanyahu’s aggressive, self-serving tactics, it shows these concerns are not limited to one side of the fence. These people are angry about their leader’s apparent indifference to the fate of the hostages, who provide an ongoing justification for his onslaught. They’d sooner see efforts to broker a cease-fire and the return of their loved ones than an impossible attempt to obliterate Hamas that condemns the captives to martyrhood.
The protestors fear that Israel has lost the moral high ground that looked unassailable after the barbarous acts of 7 October last year. They recognise the IDF’s actions are creating such scars that future generations of Israelis will know no respite from acts of vengeance, whether they be conducted with missiles or terrorist attacks.
This much is obvious, but it’s equally clear emotions run sky high on both sides, with few people being prepared to listen to reason. Write sympathetically about Palestine and risk the anger of many Jews, try to understand the Israeli point of view and be treated as an Islamophobe. It may be best to just shut up, but there’s no denying that such a complex issue is poorly served by brief, angry, one-sided posts on Instagram.
I’m not going to argue with Abdul-Rahman’s political convictions, but I was amazed at his naïve and irresponsible approach in thinking he could wave a partisan banner while serving on the NGA Council. Did no-one explain to him the nature of the role? Did he think there was an invisible barrier between his private life and his prestigious new appointment?
If you agree to sit on the NGA Council, you must also agree not to do anything that will bring the institution into disrepute or stir needless controversy. This much is, or should be, axiomatic.
Abdul-Rahman has since resigned from the Council, which was the correct – albeit unavoidable – thing to do. The problem, however, doesn’t begin and end with one person. Australia’s public art museums have a history of appointing trustees for all the wrong reasons. In the past, gallery councils were packed with highly conservative businessmen who knew nothing about art but were expected to keep a tight rein on expenses and make sure the gallery avoided any modernistic indulgences.
In time, it seemed that boards were composed mainly of former politicians, donors to political parties and faces from the social pages. The variations were the occasional art historian or artist, but it still seems as if trustees are chosen by pulling names from a hat. In The Australian, Cameron Stewart gave a graphic account of how Labor’s Minister for the Arts, Tony Burke, welcomed Abdul-Rahman to the board in September last year:
“It’s essential that our important national cultural institutions have authentic leadership that reflects their objectives, as well as modern Australia,” Mr. Burke said at the time. “The National Gallery is one of our premier cultural institutions and I’m pleased to see it continue in safe hands.”
It's not quite clear what Tony Burke was talking about. Why would this appointment ensure “authentic leadership” more than one of the corporate types the Coalition likes to put on boards? One presumes he’s referring to Abdul-Rahman’s Muslim background, suggesting that leadership is a function of identity, not experience. And what’s all this stuff about “safe hands”? Maybe he should have considered Alex Carey for the post.
The “identity” aspect must have also played a part in the appointment to the Council of Sally Scales, a member of the controversial APY Artists’ Collective, whose first solo exhibition was held in 2021. Was there no Indigenous person more experienced as a community leader or an artist? It’s amazing to think an APYAC representative could be sitting in the boardroom while the group was being investigated. Was there any perception of a conflict of interests? Did she have to leave the room? Were both artists appointed on the recommendation of director, Nick Mitzevich?
This latest fracas may at least make Mr. Burke a little more sceptical about his director’s advice. There are many senior artists with administrative experience and more extensive exhibiting careers (Abdul-Rahman’s first solo show was in 2012), who might have been invited to sit on the Council. Identity should not be such a powerful determining factor in official appointments.
Such choices give the impression that identity factors are playing an oversized role in Labor’s arts policies. The signs were clear in Revive, the Cultural Policy launched in January 2023, in which the first “pillar” was “First Nations First.” It entails: “Recognising and respecting the crucial place of First Nations stories at the centre of Australia's arts and culture” – which sounds stirring and progressive. In practice, it has opened the door to many subtle forms of discrimination from curators and bureaucrats who believe it’s necessary to promote First Nations artists over non-Indigenous ones in order to right an historical wrong. It may seem like a good deed to ‘even up the score’, but it’s a travesty of curatorial principles. Surely, in multicultural Australia, no group should be “first” in the pecking order, and all works of art should be given equal consideration in terms of quality, originality, relevance to the collection, or undeniable historical importance.
Are we so frightened of making aesthetic discriminations that we fall back on classifying artists by their ethnicity? Is it so hard to accept that good and bad work is made by artists of every age, gender, creed and colour? To pretend otherwise is ideological madness, countering the bigotry of the past with a new form of bigotry.
The scandal over Abdul-Rahman’s post reflects another tendency of our era: to believe that what we feel in our own hearts and minds has the status of truth. The argument seems to run: “If I believe it, then it’s true for me, and therefore cannot be questioned.”
When we discard the idea – or ideal - that things may be objectively true or false, good or bad, in favour of our own preferences and prejudices, it’s a recipe for social chaos. We see it on the right, in Trumpism’s “alternative facts”; and on the left, in the growing belief that forms of Indigenous knowledge must be accorded the same status as modern science. Take away people’s trust in politics and science and there’s not a lot left.
I’m sure Abdul-Rahman felt completely justified in posting his emotional responses about Israel’s war in Gaza. I’m sure Sally Scales sees absolutely nothing wrong with the NGA planning a large show of APYAC work while she sits on the Council. What is required is some higher wisdom to lay down rules of conduct and ethical behaviour within the boardrooms of our cultural institutions. The first step is to take a hard look at all prospective appointments and ask if these are the best, most appropriate people for the job. (What could possibly go wrong?). The next step is to hold the boards of cultural bodies accountable for their decisions in a way we have never attempted in the past. Trustees should not be allowed to act as ‘rubber stamps’ and time-servers, approving policy and expenditure that needs to be closely scrutinised. It’s only when we begin to treat the arts with the same seriousness that’s brought to bear on business and politics that we’ll get public institutions that are genuinely responsive to the needs and desires of the public.
The art column looks at Sculpture By the Sea, a show that enjoys a massive turnout every year, regardless of the weather – which is usually pretty ropey. The movie being reviewed is A Different Man, in which Sebastian Stan trades a hideously deformed face for his own handsome visage but somehow fails to find true happiness.