Art and Artifice

Archive 38 - Winter 2022

"Ryder Comes Home"

Albert Pinkham Ryder at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Massachusetts.

Albert Pinkham Ryder - Flying Dutchman

More about Ryder at Albert Pinkham Ryder.org

Art Institute of Chicago fires all the volunteer Docents

Why were they fired?

Despite the lack of remuneration—they do this to be helpful and because they love art—their training to be docents is extremely rigorous. First, they have to have two training sessions per week for eighteen months, and then “five years of continual research and writing to meet the criteria of 13 museum content areas” (quote from the docents’ letter to the Director of the AIC). On top of that, there’s monthly and biweekly training on new exhibits. Then there are the tours themselves, with a docent giving up to two one-hour tours per day for 18 weeks of the year and a minimum of 24 one-hour tours with adults/families. Their average length of service: 15 years. There are other requirements listed by the Docents Council in the ChicagoNow column below (first screenshot). Many of the volunteers—though not all—are older white women...

Story at Chicago Tribune [Paywall]

And at Evolution is True