“This is the Time”:A Conversation with Dr. Gus Casley-Hayford, Director of the V&A East
- The Courtauldian
- 1 day ago
- 15 min read
Zoe Smith-Holladay
Last week, I sat down in the V&A South Kensington’s Members Room with Gus Casley-Hayford OBE, Director of the V&A East and former Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. These are his musings on everything, from the opening of the V&A East Storehouse and the current art world, to A.I. art, the United States and the responsibility of museums in upholding democracy, to looking towards the future.
ZSH: What has the opening of the V&A East been like?
GCH: It's been glorious. It’s mid-November and we opened the V&A East Storehouse about four months ago. We hoped that we would have a quarter of a million visitors in our first year, but we have had more than 350,000 visitors in our first three months. I think it’s a measure of the timeless power of museums, of the collection, of everything that the V&A represents, and how compelling the V&A East Storehouse is as a proposition, as a way of rethinking the collection, of representing it, of engaging with audiences in a different way. In the previous manifestation of the collection, handfuls of people would have engaged with it every week. Now, there’s not just larger numbers, but also completely different audiences engaging with the collection in a variety of new ways.
ZSH: How is the V&A East encouraging visitors to engage with its collection in a different way?
GCH: The architecture itself. The space is a building that we inherited. It was used for broadcasting during the Olympics. We worked with the architect Elizabeth Diller, who has completely reimagined the space by filling the centre with light, glass floors and balustrades. You can stand in the centre and see most of the 280,000 objects in the collection. It creates a different kind of a paradigm. The architecture not only places you at the centre, but you can immediately begin to understand what the space is, how you could use it, and the potential for your own journeys through the collection. That sense of immediacy and the customisable relationship you can build with the collection is something that we are very proud of.
ZSH: Do you want people to move through the space in a certain way?
GCH: There are opportunities to navigate different parts of the collection through guided material. But it is conceived and presented so that you can navigate it on your own. It's a working collection, so it's constantly changing. Our hope is that you can visit multiple times and engage with it in different ways each time. But also that anyone who visits can draw unique takeaways from what they see because it is a vast and hugely diverse collection. There are archives within the Storehouse like the David Bowie collection, which is constituted of more than 80,000 objects, like costumes, notebooks, instruments and fan memorabilia, itself. They are all laid out so that you can engage with them both as a researcher and as a visitor. I think that speaks to not only the complexity of the collection, but also the flexibility of the interface that we've created.
ZSH: I imagine that means that the collection can appeal to a larger audience because everyone can enter it.
GCH: Yes, and they can make of the collection what they wish. That is the hope. That requires a flexibility of interpretation and an adaptation of the kind of relationship that we have with our audiences, allowing them to be at the very centre rather than being the object of the curatorial narrative.
ZSH: Right. You develop a two-sided relationship instead of a one-sided one.
GCH: Yes, as an alternative to a didactic relationship.
ZSH: I also think there's something to be said about the location itself, having it be in East London as opposed to South Kensington. There's a very different association being made. The V&A South Kensington is going to reflect a certain, and very different, authority.
GCH: East London is very different from West London. It has always been a place of makers, of diverse and transient communities. With that demographic complexity came incredible cultural richness and dynamism. So it has always been a place that attracted artists and cultural innovation. It has really felt like we have returned home. We are very keen that those creative communities see themselves well reflected, and that they see it as a space within which they might discover all sorts of other practices, travelling across time or across geography, using that space as a portal.
ZSH: It's also an excellent historical resource. Have you had interesting conversations and connections with the local community?
GCH: We began this project, not just in terms of the physical buildings, but in terms of the building of relationships, many years before it actually opened. We created huge teams who have gone out into communities, built relationships, often around particular objects where they felt pertinent. But I have also personally tried to visit as many schools locally as I can because those are one of the few spaces where you really get embedded within the community and you begin to see a range of people all together in one space. I have visited hundreds of schools over the last few years, talking to young people, listening to them, and learning from them what it is that they would hope we would deliver.
ZSH: Representation is something I've been thinking about a lot, especially as I've been visiting the British Museum and the National Gallery. Every time I visit, there’s groups of schoolchildren running around, which I think is great, but I have also thought that, if you have students of color going into those spaces, how are they going to see themselves reflected in the National Gallery? If they’re black students, they might not see themselves reflected at all.
GCH: Or not necessarily in a good light.
ZSH: Have you commissioned any new works recently commenting on different aspects of the V&A East’s collection?
GCH: One of my favorite pieces that we’ve commissioned is the largest ever Thomas J. Price piece, one that will stand outside our space. The one that we're commissioning is the biggest one he's ever made. It's called ‘A Place Beyond’. It's of a young woman who looks like the sort of person that you would sit next to on public transport and you probably wouldn't even notice her. But she, I hope, represents the future. I hope it's a message about who we want to feel included within our spaces, but also of our ambition to look through young eyes towards the future.
ZSH: Again it goes back to the idea that, if you're having young people visiting, they're actually going to be able to see people who look like them, as opposed to seeing themselves as servants in the periphery of some Old Masters’ painting.
GCH: We're working with a range of artists like Tanya Bregara and Carrie Mae Wiens who are helping us to tell these stories and to test ourselves.
ZSH: I also wanted to hear your thoughts, if you had any, about A.I. Art?
GCH: I find it interesting that if you go on social media and watch a film vignette, if people spot that it's AI, they immediately just say “fake!” That means that you can dismiss it. There’s something about the integrity of it. Because even if the idea remains valid, people no longer see it as being valuable. For instance, an ASMR video of a piece of soap that's being cut. That comes up on my kind of Facebook feed fairly regularly. It's just meant to be a nice thing to look at.
ZSH: Right, just a satisfying video. There's millions of them online.
GCH: Just a piece of soap that's being cut and it crumbles. It's kind of fascinating because the video is meant to be visually and sensorily satisfying. But because it's created by A.I., people are dismissive of it. I think it speaks to what's important about art, about the connective tissue between the maker and the viewer. There's something about that connection which is very old, very simple, but very important. And if at one end there's a machine, somehow we no longer see it as valuable.
ZSH: I think that people feel tricked. There's something psychological about it, feeling deceived by even the most benign of videos. I think A.I. is very much a key word right now in the art market and the art world in general. I'm curious to see what's going to happen, if anything is going to happen or if it's blown out of proportion.
GCH: The paradigm is faulty because art is difficult to describe, explain, and reduce to a simplistic thing. But if it is anything, it is about making a connection, about empathy. So, at the two ends, there need to be humans. Otherwise, why do it?
ZSH: It is telling, isn’t it, because an AI video is just not good enough.
GCH: I think that is the whole point. We come into the world alone and our first response to coming into the world is to shriek because we want to make contact with another human being.
We seek modes and methods of making connections between us and others, but we never know for certain what other people are thinking about us. One of the few ways in which we can share that emotional space is art and creativity. The connection with a machine is just different.
ZSH: So, besides AI art, have there been any other recent developments or shifts in the art world that have really interested you?
GCH: I'm delighted by the ongoing diversification of our sector. And the fact that, despite the ambient politics, museums and galleries continue to take it seriously. It's been deeply heartening to see in the US, where people have been forced in some circumstances to pay with their jobs, that the commitment to diversity seems to be unstinting in many institutions.
ZSH: It tells you something about the power of art, that it's one of the first things that the Trump administration is going after and trying to quash.
GCH: Exactly. The reason why it’s “culture wars” is because that's the terrain that matters. It becomes the proxy for politics because we define our identity, our understanding, our perspective on the world through art and culture.
ZSH: It’s a push and pull over who's controlling the narrative. Art is a way to perpetuate or to question the predominant narrative.
GCH: But new technologies have also allowed more people to create their own narratives.
ZSH: Absolutely. Now it's almost like we have the opposite problem. Everyone has their phone to capture their own perspective and their own images, whereas before it was a much more limited range.
GCH: It can feel like that. But I think the algorithms through which we can actually discover other people's thinking and content are very limited and very controlled.
ZSH: It takes two minutes of scrolling, if that, before the algorithm narrows down based on what you’re liking, what you're watching, what you're ignoring, who you're following. It's definitely not a neutral process. It is continuously informed by tech companies.
GCH: It's the narrowing rather than the broadening which is the deep problem. Narrowing our viewpoints undermines democracy and healthy diversity because we need to learn and become tolerant of other people.
ZSH: It can lead to people misjudging how popular or how well founded their own personal opinion and perspective is.
GCH: Truth loses meaning. If enough people say the world is flat, it takes on validity. There become cultures within which there seems to be an acceptance of various numbers of truth. But the truth is not something completely nebulous that anyone can claim.
ZSH: I think it reflects a lack of trust in general. A lack of trust in institutions and trust in the government to have any sort of semblance of a hold on the truth. So now people question climate experts or experts in vaccines or viral infections. So there is no longer any even ground for people to meet on.
GCH: If there's any way out of this, it must be that we find the spaces to come together and accept that we won't always agree. But we have to find the self-control to tolerate and listen to arguments that we don't agree with. I think that's something that universities and museums have a role in. It's difficult, but it's something that we have to embrace.
ZSH: Absolutely, and it is absolutely achievable. It's been done before. There's been a destabilizing effect, not just from the internet, but a general lack of trust in institutions.
GCH: But if you look at Harvard and the Smithsonian, it is these cultural and educational institutions that have held the line. People who are at risk of their livelihoods and at risk of their passport. Those sacrifices are great. It may take an entire generation for us to recognize what people have been sacrificing during this period to hold the line. But I think it's very important that we find ways of acknowledging them because many of them are doing it in complete isolation. It must be terrifying.
ZSH: To have your career, your social life, your passport, your citizenship threatened.
GCH: And therefore, by extension, your family. Because of a belief in truth. That is something that goes back to the time of Galileo. I think it's important that the rest of the world, particularly in academia and the museum sector, acknowledge the sacrifice those people are making. Because they are being heroic. These are the things that, when the wind was at our back, we all celebrated. In 2019, during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, there were institutions across the world that made commitments to equity and to freedom and to ambition and to learning. This is the time in which those commitments need to be drawn upon. All liberal democracies have that underpinning belief in freedom, a belief in creating space for the quieter voices, so that they can actually express themselves. The belief in tolerance. This is the time, when the wind is actually blowing against us, for us to stand up and say that we're not just proud of those things, but we're prepared to fight for them, rather than be quiet.
ZSH: This is the moment. A lot of Americans, including myself, are so disappointed right now in the corporations that signed onto commitments to Black Lives Matter or to LGBT Pride when it was in vogue, but now are nowhere to be seen, if not doing the exact opposite.
GCH: But then you see the price that can be paid. Target decided that diversity was a thing that they could sweep under the rug. And they paid for it.
ZSH: They have.
GCH: There are certain things that the quieter voices within society, who represent the powerful majority, believe in. That's where the culture of any nation actually resides. I do believe that the West is held together by an innate liberalism and respect for others. That gives me hope.
ZSH: The power of collective action. And if one person decides they're not going to be shopping at Target, that's one thing, but if millions of people across the country are no longer shopping at Target, then that is a real movement, a response to injustice.
GCH: But it's also marching, it's responses to ICE.
ZSH: It's protest.
GCH: It's protest. It's making one's voice heard. I do not see this as being political because my lines are drawn around equity. All I would say is that if we wish to fight for equity, then the terms upon which we deliver the very core things that museums and universities deliver have to be freely and fairly offered. We need to be able to demonstrate that in the people we employ, the courses that we teach, and the students that we host.
ZSH: We can’t allow ourselves to be swayed or compromised by regimes, essentially.
GCH: Yes, we don't work to political terms. It may well be that we have tenure, but it's not to be judged by the electorate…we are judged by truth. I think that is a very clear mandate, and it offers us great clarity when we're challenged by complexity. We should say that as a blessing.
ZSH: It should be separate and apart from corporations controlled by their shareholders. It should be in a separate category.
GCH: But we have shareholders as public institutions or public facing institutions. Our shareholders are the broader public, our students, and our visiting bodies. They are the people who invest in us. They are the government who support and sponsor us. We have a variety of different constituencies. But what all of those have in common is a support for the enfranchisement of the broader spectrum of the population through fair and equal engagement. That is uncontroversial. These are the terms upon which the very first museums and universities were conceived. They are timeless and very noble terms. I think, in times like this, even though the weather might be inclement, it's not the time for us to turn away, it's for us to reinvest in it.
ZSH: And to continue that commitment. I think it is the role of students like myself to encourage and demand that commitment from our institutions and from universities. To encourage them to act.
GCH: But within the bounds of remembering that within institutions like these we are governed, and we are led by human beings. These are people whose decisions could cost them their livelihoods, that could cost their child their opportunities. Try to be generous and thoughtful because some of these people feel like they’ve got to hold the line because remaining in their position is the gift that they can give their institution.
ZSH: It's a precarious position to be in. I look back on the great civil rights movements of the past and think, “Wow, it's so amazing that all these people stood up and protested.” Part of my encouragement to myself has been to push past that and recognize that there is a need right now. People might be looking back in the future in a similar way, looking up to the people who took a stand and took action.
GCH: Theodore Parker wrote about the arc of progress leaning towards justice in 1853. When this institution was being constituted, he was talking about freedom in such a radical and beautiful way. When Parker was talking about that arc, he was looking right out at the horizon. In the intervening 170 years since then, we have seen rights for women, civil rights, the fall of the Soviet Union, apartheid, and other huge shifts towards freedom that have been negotiated from the margins. But we're also seeing a shift back against that, appalling things happening.
ZSH: A reaction.
GCH: But we should see that bigger arc within its context. The reason why Martin Luther King in the 1960s re-quotes Theodore Parker from the 1850s is because that arc, as they both say, is not linear. But there is progress being made. We should never forget that. When we forget that, it disempowers us. It makes it feel like our actions are pointless because the status quo will hold, but it is not holding. Women's rights have changed. The rights of people of color have changed. We have, particularly across the Western world, the demographic weight of shifts in population in urban regions, we have the shifts in the economies of the Global South. These are things that should give us confidence.
ZSH: I agree. There have been fundamental changes that I should hope will never go backwards. They're going to continue forwards. And I don't doubt that people will be quoting Martin Luther King Jr. quoting Theodore Parker a hundred years in the future as well.
GCH: They will be.
ZSH: Because it's, and I don't want to say cyclical because there is progression, but there's sort of a parallel, a throughline.
GCH: I agree. But there will be reactions because it's scary for the people who seek to maintain the status quo. They recognize that it is being ever eroded. So there are moments when there is a guttural recoil.
ZSH: There's a fear that they will be treated in the same way. Instead of thinking equality means that everyone will be treated fairly, they assume that they will be treated in the way that they've treated other people.
GCH: But I also think some feel that, if they walk into the room they should be setting the agenda. They worry, “Why aren't I being treated in this way? How is it that a woman of color can take up space in the room, or be in charge?”
ZSH: That's why the focus on young people is so important because change happens generationally, amongst the youngest generations now.
GCH: But think about the Baby Boomers, who seem at the moment the most intransigent. Think about Woodstock, when they were the age that Gen Z is now. The terms upon which they were wanting to renegotiate the world. Think of Woody Gutherie and Joan Baez. Think about what they were protesting both against and for. The thing to remember is that we need to keep our heads up toward the horizon because it's very easy to want to pull the ladder up behind us.
ZSH: It is. I've been thinking about an interview with Michelle Obama from a couple weeks ago where she said America was not ready for a female president, especially a black female president. I would agree, but I would also like to think that one day America will be ready.
GCH: America will be ready one day. My view is that what she might be trying to say is that we can't take any risks in the next election and we need to make sure that we get someone who ticks every box.
ZSH: Well, hopefully we make the sacrifices we need to make now for that future in which we will be ready.
GCH: Exactly.
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