The International African American Museum’s former director of planning and operations has sent a blunt warning to the institution’s board members about numerous problems that could impact its opening, planned for late-2022.
In a lengthy memorandum obtained by The Post and Courier, which was first sent to the executive committee in November, then to the full board, Bernice Chu expressed deep concerns about staffing, leadership, diversity, low morale and a "toxic" and "siloed" work environment. Her memo lays out problems that, for years, some insiders have whispered about and some outside observers have feared.
In the past 2½ years, at least seven staff members or contracted employees have left the organization, three since Tonya Matthews was named chief executive officer in May, including Chu, according to the memo. Chu's contract was terminated by Matthews on June 8, but Chu was asked by members of the executive committee to return. She agreed, but left her position on Nov. 15.
“It has hemorrhaged prominent Black scholars and professionals and is becoming a known racist and misogynistic organization,” Chu wrote. “Mayor (Joe) Riley, IAAM’s supporters, and the local and global communities deserve so much more than what IAAM has become.”
Bernice Chu, the founding director of the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art, was director of planning and operations for the International African American Museum during its construction phase. She left the organization in November. IAAM/Provided
Chu, a respected museum professional who was tasked with overseeing IAAM's build-out phase, alleged that too many women have left the board and staff, partly because their voices were not valued sufficiently, and talented Black women, such as Brenda Tindal and Joy Bivins, received inadequate support though both were capable of becoming CEO. The organization's staff and board, though committed to interpreting the African American experience, generally has become more White, Chu said. And protecting problematic staff members because they are Black heightens morale problems, she added.
Bernard Powers, a historian and board member who served as interim CEO after Michael Boulware Moore left in August 2019, said start-up organizations often experience growing pains and changes of personnel.
“It’s not unprecedented for museums that deal with controversial subjects,” he said.
But Chu — who is Asian American, a trained architect who manages museum construction projects and operations, and a veteran of the Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Botanical Garden and James Museum of Western Wildlife Art in St. Petersburg, Fla. — has insisted the problems confronting IAAM are not typical. Staff turnover, for example, already has sent discreet signals through the museum sector, she wrote.
“During the latest campaign to hire a new CEO, the headhunter spoke with staff members and confirmed the problem with the organization was the dysfunction of the executive committee and the board,” Chu wrote. “Potential candidates in the museum world had already stayed clear, and the pool was miniscule.”
A crew works on the International African American Museum on Dec. 13, 2021, in Charleston. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
As a result of the dysfunctional work environment, the museum risks compromising its mission and its success when it opens to the public, Chu warned in her memo. Museum officials have said they plan a soft opening sometime during the summer of 2022 and a formal opening in the fall. They are actively seeking an education director.
“Prior to the anticipated opening, the building will be completed, and the exhibition will be installed, but without a synergetic and energized museum staff, the visitor experience at IAAM will be disappointing,” Chu wrote, adding specifically that:
- The plan for a hybrid security/visitor service associate team is at risk.
- The plan to make the café and food program part of the museum’s mission could be delayed.
- The plan to offer scholarly and public programs could suffer from lack of substance.
- The plan for a virtual vendor showcase and holiday pop‐up shop is threatened.
Reached on Dec. 14, former Mayor Joe Riley, who has long spearheaded the project, said he was confident the museum would open on time and live up to its promises. He declined to comment on Chu’s allegations, citing “a confidential personnel matter” that was under review.
“I will say that this is an exciting time for the museum,” Riley said. “The building is nearing completion. It has more than 20,000 members, and fundraising continues to go very well. We’re staffing up and I think the museum is in a great place.”
Wilbur Johnson, chairman of the museum board, said the executive committee is taking Chu's memo seriously and looking into her allegations. He therefore chose not to discuss personnel issues, except to say that any staff-related problems did not impact the museum's trajectory to opening day.
"I'm not aware of any delay connected to any problem that was referenced or identified in that memo, or that is something outside the ordinary construction ebb and flow," Johnson said. "We’re going to push forward. We believe this is heading in the direction this needs to head."
Museum leaders raised more than $100 million in public and private donations before breaking ground in mid-2019, and millions more since.
Requests for comment sent to current and former museum staff received no reply.
‘Working diligently’
Matthews acknowledged the museum has been the subject of controversy and concern for years.
“I have inherited everything — many would say, a host of problems,” she said. “But what I would say is I’ve inherited a host of opportunities and potential solutions. I do value being at an organization that is on the cusp of such great change, such great challenge.”
She said she regrets the loss of some talented people and stands by her decision to hire others.
“A big part of getting the museum ready is filling out staff and bringing on the most qualified people the country has to offer us,” Matthews said. “We’re looking for folks with museum experience and passion for the mission.”
She said a diverse staff that includes professional African Americans is a priority.
“We are working diligently to center the African American voice and history in everything we do.”
Construction continues at the site of the International African American Museum on Dec. 13, 2021, in Charleston. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
Zinnia Willits, executive director of the Southeastern Museums Conference, which is part of the national watchdog and accreditation group American Alliance of Museums, has worked on a number of museum startup, renovation and expansion projects. She was director of collections and operations at the Gibbes Museum from 2003 to 2020. Willits said startup projects typically must avoid certain known pitfalls. Too often they:
- Focus more on the physical building than on programming and operations, forming a cohesive staff and fostering productive collaboration.
- Suffer from “founder’s syndrome,” in which the people who initiate a project and raise the capital insist on retaining control or asserting their influence broadly.
- Hire people to help with just one phase of the project, then replace them with others, making it difficult to engender a healthy work culture.
- Conceive of their museum as unique and therefore isolated from the rest of the museum and academic world, which discourages open communication with other cultural institutions.
- Fail to involve museum professionals early in the design process, inadvertently creating a metaphorical square space into which staff must try to squeeze a round program.
Joy Bivins was chief curator at the International African American Museum. Now she leads the New York City-based Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. IAAM/Provided
Brenda Tindal, founding director of education and engagement for the International African American Museum, has assumed a new role at the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture. File/Provided
Bernard Powers is director of the College of Charleston's Center for the Study of Slavery and former interim CEO of the International African American Museum. Provided
At IAAM, the building was designed before the exhibitions and the narrative were fully developed, Willits noted.
Keith Waring, a member of the executive committee, said the main focus now is on getting the museum building finished inside and out. But Chu's memo will be reviewed carefully.
"There will be a process," he said. "We want to find out if there were missteps."
Powers said Chu’s is just one perspective on a complex project decades in the making, and it’s unfortunate the memo arrived “as we are continuing to build momentum toward the opening.” Her assertions will be carefully considered, even as the board and the staff continue working on gallery design, proofing exhibit scripts, reviewing and critiquing media productions, finishing construction and publicizing milestones, he said.
Two of those on staff who have left the museum, Joy Bivins and Brenda Tindal, went from mid-career positions to executive-level posts (the Shomburg Center and Harvard museums, respectively) — opportunities, in other words, that few would turn down under any circumstances, Powers said.
“I wish that we had been able to keep all of them,” he said. “I also understand that when people in the professional community hear that people have left, and don’t really know the reasons why, sometimes they settle for the simplest explanation” — dissatisfaction.
Powers said he looks forward to the prospect of widening IAAM’s network of professional contacts, a silver lining to staff attrition.
“Conversations with some of them suggest they will be advocates for us,” he said. “The fact that I can say that with some confidence indicates that these are not people with whom we have a broken relationship.”
‘Heads up’
Millicent Brown, a retired professor of history at Claflin University and vocal critic of the International African American Museum, helped start the advocacy group Citizens Want Excellence at IAAM. She said she was not surprised by the concerns outlined in Chu’s memo.
“It’s unbelievable to me, and always has been, that folks fortunate enough to find themselves in positions of decision-making refuse to acknowledge the need to engage outside voices,” Brown said.
Millicent Brown is a retired professor of history at Claflin University. File/Gately Williams/Provided
The problems with IAAM were nearly inevitable given its track record, she said. They’re rooted in three basic issues: a failure to bring a variety of voices to the table early on to define the museum’s purpose; a failure to conduct a racial truth and reconciliation process before plans were laid; and a failure to escape the paternalism inherent in most ambitious public projects in South Carolina and beyond.
These problems are hardly unique to IAAM, Brown said. They apply to nearly all public institutions, such as the school systems, city governments, police departments and universities.
The discord across institutions is a product of a community “trying to deal with its history” and a power structure that often is reluctant to do so, she said. “We are at a point in time when we are grappling with recognizing the mistakes and horrors of the past, and many well-intentioned people want to move forward from that.”
It’s difficult work that requires humility, cooperation and determination, she said.
Instead, Brown said, “what we have in all these different silos and pockets — the pieces that make a civilized community — we just have people fighting in their own domains.”
That lack of productive engagement holds us back, Brown said.
“The museum has failed this community from the very beginning because it could not accept the fact that there were voices that offered insight, and perhaps critique, but those voices could never be recognized as valid or viable because somebody else on top knew better,” she said.
Powers said the museum over the years has conferred with many constituencies: museum professionals, consultants, historians and other scholars, and members of the community. It was at the start of a statewide information tour during which input would have been gathered, but the COVID pandemic interfered.
“What we have in Charleston (is) some folk who have a certain vision of what the museum ought to be, and they’re dead set on making it that,” he said.
The behavior to which Brown refers surely exists, but it’s not unique to Charleston, Powers said.
Matthews agreed.
Tonya M. Matthews is president and CEO of the International African American Museum in Charleston. Provided
“It’s the kind of vigilance that Dr. Brown bring to the table that (makes) organizations like our museum focused," Matthews said. "She’s reminding us, reminding me, this is not about keeping our heads down like a turtle in the sand. It’s about keeping our heads up and (engaging with the community).”
She said the new museum can play a role in encouraging a difficult reckoning underway in the country.
“I do want the museum to play its role around racial reconciliation, restorative justice,” she said. “I think museums are a great venue. We are designed to not be intimidating. We are designed for public learning.”
If an institution built upon Gadsden’s Wharf, a point of entry for tens of thousands of enslaved Africans at the turn of the 19th century, can foster racial reconciliation, then such healing is possible anywhere, Matthews said.
“That is the gift that Charleston is on the verge of offering the nation.”
For the moment, though, she and her team are focused on preparing for the museum's ribbon-cutting. The exhibits and narrative must be in place, collected artifacts catalogued and prepared for display, the Center for Family History operational, the landscaping finished, and the visitor experience refined. The search is on for a lead curator and education director.
They have a little less than a year to go.
