A Museum’s Centering on Healing Through Community Care and Social Responsibility

Kathryn Snyder, ATR-BC, LPC, PhD

LA museum’s centering on healing through community care and social responsibility: A dialogue with Chloe Hayward of The Studio Museum of Harlem (USA), 2022

Abstract

Chloe Hayward has been a museum educator for over 20 years. In the past 10, she has undertaken a master’s degree in art therapy and brought a community wellness-based practice to her work at The Studio Museum of Harlem in New York City (USA). Her model serves to reduce the stigma of therapy or mental health treatment by weaving supportive, intentional art education within an art community that has always been dedicated to safe spaces for creativity, personal development, and healing from systematic oppression and trauma. Together, we consider how an ethic of care may be practiced and centered in museum spaces and how art therapy may contribute to transformative practices in art spaces and museums.

Introduction

In mid-February, I interviewed Chloe Hayward through a video conference platform to discuss her museum art therapy practice, the ethic of care at its center, and her vision for the potential for art therapy in museums. We extend our conversation into discussing the power of a place that centers black aesthetics and art of and for BIPOC communities, and the need for the arts for self-care practices.

Ms. Hayward’s work extends beyond the usual borders of education to include work with her colleagues to support their health and wellbeing, collaborations with the curatorial teams to build connections between art on view and the educational components that surround an exhibit and provide opportunities for all audiences to process emotional content. Her efforts, along with the general mission of the museum aim to create space for black arts and culture to thrive. Bringing healing to community and artists of all levels is an inherent anti-racist, anti-oppressive practice.

KS: So, tell me more about your museum and its relevance, in the world of museums generally, and in the community in which it resides.

Chloe Hayward: The Studio Museum in Harlem was founded in 1968. It really was founded as a space for black artists, who were underrepresented and not given visibility and space in the larger art world — to have a space to not only exhibit, but to make work. Our mission is in our name. Since its founding we have had studio space for artists to come and create work. We are deeply interested, invested, connected to black art and culture, and not just nationally, not just locally, but internationally and globally as well.

KS: Great. Tell me more about your role there, your work there, and your journey to get there.

CH: My current role at The Studio Museum is as the Associate Director of Education. It has been quite a journey to get where I am today, but like they say, the joy is in the journey. I started my career in museums working at a children's museum in Manhattan and I’ve worked in early childhood, in public programming, and in what was then called outreach programming, which I find to be a very dated term, but I digress. I really found my love and my joy in education, in that space. I did want to get more experience in the classroom, so I took a brief pause in my work in museum education, and I went into the classroom. I was an early childhood classroom teacher for quite a while before I started recognizing the ways that the traditional classroom space can be limiting in terms of what I, as an educator was able to offer, and I started to discover that a lot of the work I was doing with young people was centered around art, art making, the artistic process, and I started to recognize the ways in which art could help students to understand themselves and can be a vehicle for bringing community together. That's when I did a little research and discovered there's this incredible field called art therapy, and I took an art therapy course at the New School; it was like art therapy 101 or something. I was like, this is it. I realized that I wanted to devote as much time and energy as possible to this work, and to do that fully I needed to get my Master’s in Art Therapy. So, I went to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and I received my Master's in Art Therapy & Creativity Development. While I was working towards my degree, I also applied and got a position at The Studio Museum in 2010 as a Teaching Artist. You know, my first touch point with The Studio Museum was when I was teaching in an early childhood classroom in Harlem; someone from Family Programs came into my classroom through a school partnership and was teaching about artwork and artists from the museum's permanent collection. I was just blown away at the content and the context of the artwork being offered and how incredible it was. My classroom, which was predominantly full of BIPOC children, were able to see and experience artwork and experiences of the artwork that mirrored and reflected back who they were, and who they are, and who we are, as a culture and a community. This really was a personal thing for me because I grew up in a predominantly white community and I not only did not see my experiences reflected, and my image reflected back to me, but oftentimes when I would attempt to make space for that, it was erased. So, to be able to be in an environment where that is not only offered but celebrated was really something special for the children I worked with, and for me personally and it led me down a path professionally of wanting to be more connected to The Studio Museum.

So, as a Teaching Artist at the Studio Museum, I worked for five years in that position, and I was able to go into schools and community organizations in Harlem and be in the museum space working alongside incredible artists, educators, and staff at the museum who sort of lived and breathed our mission. In 2015, a full-time position became available in Family Programs, the same person who had come into my classroom in a school partnership, let me know that she was leaving and that this position was going to be available. I promptly applied, and I promptly got an interview; the rest is history. I was the Family Programs Coordinator and then two years later I moved to the Education Manager position and, most recently in 2020 I was made Associate Director of Education, where I’ve had the privilege to be working with the Director of Education Shanta Lawson for 12 years now.

KS: So, it was meant to be.

CH: It was meant to be. And you know, to speak to your question about this journey and where it's led me, I grappled for some time, with what it means to be an art therapist, right? Because I got the degree, I became licensed, registered, board certified; I am, and always will be an educator at heart and I’m grateful to work with the people I do at the museum because the heart of our education department is care- we always move from a space of care, and I think that that holds true across the institution in whichever department we're talking about — from Curatorial to Communications to Public Programs to Development. But yeah, I always grappled with holding these two spaces of art therapist and art educator and then in the last few years I’ve come to sort of reject this narrative that I have to be compartmentalized into one of these spaces, depending on which room I’m in. I’m really working to integrate my educational pedagogy with my therapeutic framework, into this “third space,” that is the intersection of all the ways that education and wellness and therapy and therapeutic spaces create care and hold people in whatever it is they're going through, whatever it is that they understand or want to understand in in that space of care.

KS: That's great. And I really resonate with that. Our regulations at whatever level put us in those boxes and yet, it's hard to live in them.

CH: Yeah, it's really hard. You know mostly, I believe, museums are not recognized as a sight of “clinical practice” when this work is happening. It's happening, in institutions across the country. It’s happening, I believe, at The Studio Museum; this creation of therapeutic practices and creation of therapeutic spaces - art is inherently therapeutic, and to not recognize that this could be a space where art therapy programs can not only live, but thrive and build community, is a little unfortunate. I think for me, I’m really witnessing how the spaces that we are creating at The Studio Museum are dynamic and therapeutic. There’s something that's been happening for quite some time, especially in the black community, we make a way for ourselves, and we always have, and we always will. But I think there's something really powerful and magical about looking at art together and talking about art and making art in community that builds this sort of therapeutic space. It builds this therapeutic space that is… a community… a community path to healing that is not necessarily found in more traditional spaces of art therapy.

KS: Can you say more about your approach to community care and art therapy?

CH: The work we are doing at The Studio Museum, the work that has been ongoing since the Museum’s inception, is making space, creating space, and holding space for the black community. My personal theoretical framework springs from a practice that is existential, humanistic, and psychoanalytic. And I think that a model that I turn to often is the Open Studio practice, created by the art therapist Pat Allen. That speaks a lot to the ways that I believe our Education Department works, in that the art materials are an offering; they're an offering for self-expression to witness what comes up in the group, what comes up in community. And in that space there's a dismantling of hierarchy. In an art therapy Open Studio practice, the therapist holds equal weight; there's no power dynamic, there's no power struggle, it's truly a community of people who have come together to practice as one. And so, a lot of the approach to the programming that I co-create is really coming from a person-centered place. It's not us going in and telling, but it's us going in and listening, and reflecting back what we hear. And many times, reflecting back what we feel is needed, through an offering. An offering comes in a set of art materials, programs, and projects in the spirit of building and co-creating collaboratively as a community, in community, with community.

KS: Say more about how the Open Studio works and how it intersects with all of the other aspects of the museum.

CH: So, for me, the Open Studio approach, in the way that I like to see myself practicing it, is boiled down very simply to a few things: first, we're all in this space together, right? So, there's no hierarchy, there's no one person who's “it”, we are it together. So, we're here together in this space, and while an offering is being made through art materials or questions or writing or prompts and there's really no one way, right? And so, we are creating and building whatever it is we're making together. And then lastly, whatever has happened in this space through conversation, verbally and non-verbally, through the image making, through the image looking, that belongs to all of us, and it's a space to witness one another. And in that witnessing is that healing space, it is that opportunity for a deeper knowing of oneself and one's community. To speak more specifically, in Family Programs we had a program called “Target Free Sundays” and that was a two-hour drop-in art making experience that happened every week in the Museum, and I would offer materials that were inspired by an exhibition that was happening in the museum. It was not, you know, “we are making this thing” but, “these are some of the ideas of the artists, these are some of the thoughts of the curators, these are some of the intentions of this exhibition, these are some of the materials or, this is the process that this artist has explored, let's think about that together and let's explore that together”. And what would happen in that space was so special because we had people from the Harlem community and beyond- from different countries even visiting the museum that day, creating in a space together, and just sharing with each other. We're making, and you know, in education sometimes people think there's a right and wrong answer, and that's one of the things I love about art making, is that there is no right and wrong, there just “is”. To be in that space, of just being, was really wonderful. I think that's the bottom line of an Open Studio is that something is therapeutic when community comes together; we're in the space, something is offered, we're co-creating, and then we're witnessing one another and through witnessing in conversations, something magical takes place.

KS: Lovely. And you were speaking of those offerings-that they will often reference, the current exhibition; I’m really interested in considering how powerful art is; how it conveys really important messages, meanings, and feelings. And I think that, specifically at a museum that is focused on black aesthetics, black culture, I’m imagining that that's a powerful part of the programming and “magic” that happens. Can you speak to that?

CH: I think in a lot of our partnerships that we have, not just in education, but across the institution, there's really an open mind and an open ear to hearing what the needs of the people who we’re in partnership with need, think, and feel. And I think that part of our approach is that we respond to that through these programs, and these offerings. I’m thinking about what it means to be a space that uplifts, recognizes, celebrates the African diaspora and all that that entails: black culture… we talk in our mission about a dynamic exchange and how I’ve observed and participated in that over my time at Studio Museum, being in constant dialogue with my colleagues as well. I think part of part of ‘care work’, part of ‘change work’ really is making space for conversations that are not always comfortable. To have an institution where the lives and feelings and experiences of black people, of BIPOC individuals, is reflected on the walls opens a space for dialogue around, who we are as individuals and who we are, as a society, is so valuable. I think that part of the power and the magic of art is that art is a mirror, it’s a reflection….and so, when you look at a work of art you're going to see what's reflected back to you, you will see who you are in relationship to what you are looking at. And so obviously as a Black woman, I look at a lot of this work, and I see myself in it, and I see my experiences reflected, but you know, what about people out there who are not black? What about people who don't identify as BIPOC, what are they seeing? And what is their experience of that work? And I think that that's why this museum is so powerful and can be so impactful because it really opens the art on the walls, opens the door for a conversation about people's individual experiences with race and identity; considering what comes with that, and really allows the artwork, allows sort of an excavation of society, systems, and structures. And those are important conversations to always be having, but it's ever more relevant and necessary now.

KS: Yeah, and when we spoke before you spoke about how you do programs that support museum staff that's also part of…

CH: Care happens at all levels. In our school community partnerships, we were in the process of developing therapeutic workshops for educators. We also have created space for some of the teachers, community organizers, people who are giving care, to have space for their own self-care and wellness. Also, I am a member of a group founded at The Studio Museum called CEEW- the Collective for Employee Engagement and Wellness. It's a voluntary group of staff members who wanted to create space for wellness and care among all the staff. We do that through an offering of internal programs and events. I also created something at the Museum called ‘Art Spa’ that originated in the education office. I was testing out materials for one of these open studio ‘Target Free Sunday’ workshops, and different staff members from different departments kept dropping in and I remember, we were working with clay, and people kept coming in and asking if they could join me and I said sure. The next thing I know, there's almost 20 people sitting around this giant table. People are in the corner, and there's people in the education office making art, and everyone's excited, and everyone's talking and there's this incredible thing happening, and I said to myself, “we need this as a community, we're talking about art with the community, and showing art in our gallery walls, we should be making art together”. So now it's evolved into a once a month, drop-in art making workshop for staff. And it's been really wonderful. Art Spa has now become a part of the offerings that CEEW offers to all museum staff, including interns.

KS: That's great — I mean it seems self-evident that people who work in art spaces should engage in their own art making as part of their self-reflection, self-awareness, self-care. However, I don't think it happens that frequently.

CH: Yeah, which is so wild to me because it's like, how can we be asking people to do something that we don't do ourselves? How are you going to get someone excited about something if you're not even excited about it? Also, to speak to care, to be a caregiver you know, in whatever capacity that looks like, you have to have a practice of self-care. It's true and it's real. How are you caring for yourself what does that look like, you know? I like to think about being an educator, being a therapist, as being a sponge, constantly absorbing and taking in all of these thoughts, feelings, experiences. My emotions have to go someplace and wring out or else I’m just to be saturated and what use is that?

KS: And I think, just to speak to the power of art and the image, when we're absorbing all of these images all the time, we need to find a place to process that. And what better way than to do that in some sort of visual, tactile form in our own way, in our own visual language; to kind of reconsider it, rethink it, re-meld it and put it someplace in a new way.

CH: And that is what art does! Art is transformative. It's a shifting and moving of energy towards something more… more grounded and healing, and real. And in a time where things are so uncertain and there's so much going on in the world, art can really be an anchor to ground us all, and to help us do this work of transformation and change.

KS: Yeah, so tell me about your engagement with other museum staff as the Museum is developing exhibitions.

CH: So, one of the things I really love and respect about working at Studio Museum is the level of co-creation that happens across the institution. The Curatorial Department is phenomenal. I think there's always an opportunity for communication around information for upcoming exhibitions, and there's always space made for the education department to ask questions and receive feedback. Although the exhibitions are being developed and created by curatorial, I have always felt that there's really a level of respect and contribution that's welcomed from the Educational Department. There's always space made for Education to either meet and speak with some of the artists, especially our Artists-in-Residence - that's the founding program of the institution- and in that way it's really a communal effort, because there's an opportunity, and I think that that's what is part of what makes Studio Museum so uniquely positioned in the art world, is that it's not just artists on the walls and curatorial talks, there's opportunity for the community to have experiences with artists through our programs. We have artists visits where artists will come into a school or a community organization, and communities get to hear from the artists’ firsthand experience, and this is often connected with a workshop with the artists. I think that many of the Museum’s departments are constantly in dialogue with one another, to make sure that the work is seen, felt, heard, received, and explored in a way, where it's very holistic. You don’t always see that, so I just really appreciate that level of care and co-creation.

KS: Yeah, I really do as well because, again, I think that it speaks to really considering how all parts work together and how you're really thinking about what's going to happen when people are in this space, viewing this work, engaging with art, and it really speaks to that sense that there's thought given to all those aspects up front, so that care and support can be offered.

CH: It's like a song, you know. It's like we all have the soundtrack of our lives, but we have to be in tune with one another, otherwise it's just going to be a terrible album. I see this metaphor for the work that we do: we're all singing the same song in our in our own voices, and in unison; it's really strong, it's really powerful. And that's only possible because there's a care and consideration for one another’s tone and style.

KS: That's great. And so, what is your hope or vision for how art therapy might work in museum spaces?

CH: I would love to see museum spaces recognized as a site for clinical work, so museums could offer internships towards individuals Master’s Degrees, and those with a degree in Art Therapy could apply for their Limited Permit [pre-license, state level] to practice on site at Museums, where supervision could be possible. I would love to see a space where art therapy is practiced in museums, not just in a community, therapeutic spatial sense-in its true clinical form, where the community could access these therapeutic services through a museum, which in and of itself is a community space. So, I believe that museums are uniquely positioned to provide these services to the community. It's another level of accessibility, and that can be provided to the communities that museums serve. And like I said, I think that the path would be for art therapy internships to exist in museum spaces, and for art therapy programs to be situated in museums. I would love to see all those things happen, and that's definitely been a personal mission of mine.

KS: Great, I’m joining along. What barriers, do you see that exist for that to happen? And along with that, what role or responsibility, do you think museums have to utilize their spaces in ways that are more centered around accessibility, therapy services…art therapy specifically?

CH: I think the problem that most museums face is that people walk by museums, some people think, “that's not for me.” You know? And I always asked myself why? What are museums doing that make people think that that's not a space for them? I think about it like this: you go to the supermarket, you're hungry, you're looking for something to eat, you pull into your cart what sounds good. So maybe museums are trying to feed people something that not only doesn't sound good, but they might be allergic to. What can museums offer that is really a need of the community? How can we develop resources for the community that truly meet the needs? And I think that when people walk by museums, we want them to say, “oh that's the place where I go for my art group on Monday nights to deal with…”, or “oh that's the place where I got to go to the artists talk where those artists were talking about their experiences with incarceration,” and “there’s a community group centered around abolition at that Museum, which is important to me because I have experienced this with my family member.” Museums, I believe, are working towards offering individuals and community the things that they're hungry for. I think museums across the country have been in the midst of a kind of a reckoning around the ways that they've been exclusionary and elitist. And I think that art therapy specifically is a universal language that allows people to not just connect through stories, but connect through feelings. It allows people to be deeply immersed in a creative process that moves the energy of being, which moves the energy of the ways in which they move through society. It’s an internal dynamic exchange that allows the external one to even be considered. I would love to see a future where more art therapy can be included in museums, so that we can start connecting on a human level. Then some of this nonsense that's going around in the world can stop.

KS: Amen.

CH: Museums can learn a lot from art therapy. And in one way or another, I think that museums and art therapy are actually very close cousins. Because museums, are a home for art, space for art exploration, for art education, for artists. And art therapy, you know is concerned with creativity, and in order to experience a process of creativity- a process means constant flow of movement. And so, by that definition, to be creative is to change. And to change, you have to have constant motion. You know museums need to need to lean into their creativity, and be that change, be that constant flow, and that constant forward motion.

KS: That's lovely. I feel like museums, like art therapy are pulling at the threads of time and landing in a new space.

CH: Time will tell.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Chloe Hayward and The Studio Museum of Harlem for partnering on this interview submission. These are the stories that need to be told about how we can serve our communities in new ways towards care and wellbeing and a better world.