As this series of blog posts has documented, the last eighteen months have been a time of reflection and positive change at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. In the Development department, the institutional goal of becoming an anti-racist institution is surfacing new ideas, inspiring us to rethink previous objectives, and encouraging creative strategizing. The solution to how to best support the work being done by our colleagues came into sharper focus last year, after FAMSF received a major grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation to not only support a two-year curatorial fellowship program for four emerging art history scholars, but also a new object database and website, making our collections even more accessible. Expanding opportunities for aspiring museum professionals of all backgrounds in a meaningful way has been an ongoing goal of the Museums, and this grant has provided us with the means to do so in a sustained, ambitious manner that had previously not been possible.
The Diversity and Innovation Fund
Galvanized by this transformational gift, the Development team recognized the need for FAMSF to have its own committed fund to support the slate of new and already existing initiatives arising from our efforts to become an anti-racist institution. To that end, we launched the Diversity and Innovation Fund in 2021 with an ambitious financial goal that will be critically important to jumpstart new initiatives and to continue this work beyond this initial investment.
In this post, we highlight some of the initiatives identified as funding priorities by the Development team.
Programs and Initiatives
The Diversity and Innovation Fund is intended to kickstart or bolster support for programs and initiatives that aim to help the Museums become more accessible, diverse, equitable, and inclusive.