In the period between her departure from President Donald Trump as director of the National Portrait Gallery and her new job as director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Kim Sajet has been to the Netherlands. In her still bare office in the largest city in Wisconsin, she offers speculaasjes from a blue cookie tin. She is wearing a chain with large, partly Delft blue, balls.
Sajet (60) was born in Nigeria, grew up in Australia and has been living in the United States for almost thirty years, but her passport is Dutch. The bond with the country that left her ‘adventurous’ parents in the early 1960s was never cut. Especially not because her younger brother, who is deaf and heavily autistic, has been cared for in Vught for decades. She often goes there to see him. “Although I can’t do much more with him than legoing.”
Sajet talks about it in English, with an Australian accent, because she formulates just a little smoother in it than in Dutch. “I have always seen my international background here as my superpower. My perspective as an outsider helped me.”
From 2013 to June this year, art historian and businessman Sajet led the National Portrait Gallery. That is one of the prominent museums of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, exclusively focused on American portrait art and best known for the collection of paintings by former presidents. “Americans see themselves as the center of the world. At the same time, they underestimate their omnipresent influence on the rest of that world, as a symbol of democracy and creativity,” says Sajet. She mentions examples from the popular culture: the films she saw and the music she listened to when she grew up in Melbourne. But that observation is just as good at the moment in history, in which large political, social, cultural, economic and diplomatic changes in the US have an impact worldwide.
In her analysis of that current events and the state of democracy, she is reluctant. She also hesitates to share details about her sudden departure as director of the National Portrait Gallery. “As a director at the Smithsonian, you are hyper -conscious that you do not choose a party” between the Democrats and Republicans. The institute is formally independent, but for more than 60 percent of its budget dependent on the federal government. It has an administrative council consisting of the vice president, the supreme judge of the Supreme Court and congress members of both parties. More than once, exhibitions have been adjusted under political pressure. Sajet does not release that she is gone from Washington. “The world is too small. You should never think that the spotlight is not on you.” Also in Swing State Wisconsin has to deal with both political parties. “Culture is always political.”
Incorrect ideology
During his first reign, Trump spoke praising the Smithsonian, but immediately from the start of his second term he had provided it at the institute. It would be too “woke“Being concerned alone” with what is wrong with our country, with how terrible slavery was. ” Collections are screened in ‘tone, historical framing And connection with American ideals “and stripped of” incorrect ideology “. The historical story must be revised and emphasize the spotless ‘good’ of the US.
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Trump mainly seemed to turn against how the black history of the United States is told. But on the last Friday of May, Sajet was the first museum director he personally attacked and wanted to get rid of it. “I was in my office. An employee came in with a worrying expression on her face and I thought” what again? “, Because there is always something going on.” This is just landed on truth social“She said,” Trumps’ own social media platform. “On request and recommendation of many, I hereby end the employment of Kim Sajet as director of the National Portrait Gallery. She is a very part-time woman and a great proponent of Dei [diversiteit, gelijkheid en inclusie]which is absolutely inappropriate in her position, “he wrote.
“You take it as it is. At that moment I just continued my work,” says Sajet now. Was she stunned, angry, sad? Had she seen this attack coming? “I have to – I want – to be very careful. I can’t even assume why he picked me out. I also didn’t get wiser about that afterwards. It was certainly a surprise.” Trump had never shown any interest in her museum: he has not been there and she never met him.
Legal processes
The Smithsonian board took ten days to come up with a statement stating that the president is not about personnel policy. Despite the statements of support and calls inside and outside the art world not to give way, Sajet decided to leave “in the interest of the institute” shortly thereafter. “The attention remained aimed at me and at some point I decided that that was not good for my staff and for the Smithsonian.”
She did not want the spotlight to have focused on the portrait museum for longer than necessary and she did not want to end up in a legal fight. “It was my own decision,” she emphasizes. “I wanted to have control over my situation again.” Whether her departure reduces the pressure on the institute, or whether it contributes to it chilling effect In the culture sector, it is still uncertain. The Trump government puts Iry League universities, prominent law firms and the Smithsonian under pressure to join his policy. Some distinguished institutions bend. The fear of becoming target also means that academic, legal and cultural institutions censor themselves. Artist Amy Sherald withdrew her upcoming exhibition from the Subiet museum.
The White House had spread a list of seventeen complaints about Sajet, ranging from her commitment to and comments about the representation of women and minorities and her donations to democratic politicians and organizations, up to the text on the sign with a temporary portrait of Trump and the rejectionyears earlier, of a gigantic canvas that a Trump fan had made for him.
Sajet calls her donations “a private business that has not influenced my work. I can’t even vote here.” But she has indeed committed herself to make the collection of the National Portrait Gallery more diverse – and she is proud of that.
Worn bank
When she started in 2013, she met a collection full of faces of “rich, pale men.” She compared the museum with “a worn couch: it’s nice, everyone loves it, but it’s not groundbreaking”. Under her leadership, space was reserved for more women and non-white Americans, “people who were missing in our collection.” She brought a gigantic portrait to the lawn of the National Mall and introduced dance and video art into the museum. She made all descriptions in the bilingual (English and Spanish) museum and was committed to better accessibility for visitors with a disability. “Because of my experience with my brother, I know how difficult it can be for a family to go somewhere with someone with a disability. It’s a shame that he is in his criticism about Dei de A van access (accessibility) not added, “she says – her only, small sneer to the president.
The question remains what the future of the Smithsonian will look like under current political pressure. Can artistic freedom and historical complexity survive, can the completeness of collections be maintained? And do all Americans feel welcome if it is forced to choose the historical and cultural perspective of one party – at least in part?
The world is too small. You should never think that the spotlight is not on you
Sajet says he is not much worried about that, because the “incredibly smart” people with whom she worked are still decisive. “I think it’s healthy that they look at the content and determine again” do we do justice to history? ” Museums still enjoy relatively much social confidence, but they are no longer the all -determined authority of knowledge and information.
Is that history rewritten by the winner of the last elections? “History is not rewritten: we will continue to tell them on the basis of facts and the many objects in museums such as the Smithsonian who are the evidence of that. But this country has chosen a certain government and I have to respect that. In my role as serving leader I say: this is where we are now. The only thing I can interpret our culture in the most respectful way”
She does not share the fear that adjusting museums is a crucial step towards an autocracy. “As director of the Portrait Gallery, I often got the question” Is this the darkest period in our history? ” Well, the civil war with 750,000 deaths was not a pleasant moment and when the museum was founded in the sixties, it was genuinely doubted about the survival of democracy. “
Kim Sajet for work Edge of England from British sculptor Cornelia Parker in the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Photo Yvette Marie Dostatni
Falling stones
Sajet would of course prefer to leave “at a time of my own choice” in Washington. But after her departure she received all kinds of offers, inside and outside the US. She chose the art museum in Milwaukee, one of the largest in the country but relatively unknown. It has an international collection that runs from the early Renaissance painter Francesco Botticini to abstract work by Gerhard Richter and from an Egyptian mummy artist to American design. “I want this one Destination Museum Become, like the Kröller-Müller, “says Sajet during a short tour.
Daily crowded tourists, such as in the stately portrait museum in Washington, are not self -evident in this spectacular building of white steel and glass to Lake Michigan. Both museums, like many others, are not yet completely over the decrease in the number of visitors during the Coronapandemie. Sajet sees it as her task to “teach people what unique and meaningful experience museum visit is”. More than for the independence of the Smithsonian and other museums, she fears that less and less value is attached to physical collections. “The storage and maintenance thereof is expensive. I can imagine a future in which we make a 3D scan everywhere and let it live in the cloud.”
If the photographer asks her which work in her new museum she would like to be recorded, she opts for a curtain of lung limestone from the English sculptor Cornelia Parker. “Perhaps this is symbolic: that I have to avoid the downing stones,” she says when she disappears laughing among the white blocks.
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