Case Study: Scaffold at the Walker Art Center

by: GracePosted on:
From The New York Times’ “Walker Art Center’s Reckoning With ‘Scaffold’ Isn’t Over Yet.”

Key Events

Written by Annabelle Johnston

The large boxlike frame of Sam Durant’s “Scaffold” was conceived as a monument to seven different mass executions, five of them by the United States’ government. The large wooden frame surrounds a raised platform, which can be accessed by sets of wooden stairs protruding from each side of the cubical structure. Beams run across the top of the open-air sculpture and inside, smaller frames represent the gallows used for hanging John Brown (1859), the Mankato Massacre (1862), the Lincoln Conspirators (1865), the Haymarket Martyrs (1886), Rainey Bethea (1936), Billy Bailey (1996), and Saddam Husein (2006). 

Durant, a white man and self-proclaimed multimedia artist, chose to depict this violence to “open the difficult histories of the racial dimension of the criminal justice system in the United States” and  to “speak against the continued marginalization of these stories and peoples, and to build awareness around their significance.” However, in speaking for rather than with affected communities, Durant resurfaced pain deeply ingrained in those he had hoped to platform and assist. Originally debuted in 2012, the sculpture was exhibited across Europe for three years until its acquisition by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2015. Walker Art Center had intended to install the piece in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, alongside the famed “Spoonbridge” (a spoon containing a bright red cherry) and “Hahn/Cock” (a large blue rooster), but was met with staunch opposition by members of the Dakota community who insisted that the creation of such a work without consultation of Dakota elders and its subsequent placement in a whimsical public space was both disrespectful and deeply traumatic. 

“Scaffold” featured a large pole in the center, a symbol reminiscent of the structure assembled to accommodate the hanging of 38 Dakota men in 1862—the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Approximately 4,000 people came to the public execution at the Mankato Gallows back in the nineteenth century, positioning public viewing of this violence as a fundamental component of the trauma experienced by the Dakota community. Viewership of such communal pain makes spectacle of the violence, a dehumanizing process in and of itself. Furthermore, to put this back on display, many argued, would be to recreate the conditions of this initial and repeated suffering. 

The installation process in 2017 was met with ongoing protests by members of the Dakota community and supporters. #TakeItDown swept social media as protestors bore signs reading “not your story”, “this hurts native people”, and “hate crime.” In an interview with local news outlet Star Tribune, Kate Beane, a Dakota woman who specializes in Dakota history at the Minnesota Historical Society, stated “I wasn’t prepared for the impact that it would have. I broke down in tears. Proper community engagement is not letting people know after the fact. We should have a seat at the table.” 

Shortly after the protests, the Walker Center held a three hour mediation session with Sam Durant, representatives from the Dakota Spiritual and Traditional Elders, four federally recognized Dakota tribes, the Walker, and Minneapolis Parks and Recreation department. The conversation was facilitated by mediator Stephanie Hope Smith. After long conversation, all parties agreed to a ceremonial burning of the sculpture and exchange of the copyright to the work. “At the press conference, Lower Sioux elder Sheldon Wolfchild stated, “How can a scaffold be erected without responding to our elders? It was beyond our comprehension that this could happen.” A Native construction company agreed to donate its services to take apart the installation, and the Walker Art Center paid the travel expenses for Dakota Spiritual and Traditional Elders to allow them to attend the ceremony. The wood was burned at Fort Snelling, where members of the Dakota tribe were originally imprisoned following the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War. 

In the immediate aftermath, the Walker museum publicly admitted regret for exhibiting this work without engaging with leaders in the Dakota and broader Native communities. Walker director Olga Viso acknowledged that in allowing the structure to serve as a gathering space which allowed visitors to explore in un-ceremonial ways, it required heightened attention and education for visitors that the museum failed to provide. The Walker was clear in its intention to follow through with Durant’s creation of a “space of remembering” and hoped to become a more “sensitive and inclusive” institution as a result of this incident. While the museum board claimed responsibility for fostering conversation with Native community members, Viso affirmed the Museum’s belief in Durant’s vision. With this, one can ask whether curators have a responsibility to push back against the intention of the artist, or is the job simply to ensure that the intention is met. I believe that the Walker as an institution, especially one that places work in public space, has a greater obligation to the surrounding community than the artists, and should be working to bring art which benefits the visitors rather than making work palatable for the audience. 

While Durant initially issued an apology and stated that he hoped this ceremony would begin a path to healing, in the following three years, he re-issued a statement which contradicted his previous apology. 

“I propose the idea that silencing a voice from the majority does not necessarily open space for minority voices. Silencing does not change the systems that create injustice and inequality and charges of cultural appropriation need to be carefully parsed. Cultural appropriation is, of course, a real phenomenon but it is often misapplied, and then spread through social media. I argue for the importance of differentiating between people and systems. I have been accused of being racist because my work makes visible existing and historical systems of racial domination, blaming the messenger as it were. However, civil rights leaders have argued that white people must be active participants in dismantling white supremacy, that injustice harms all those involved, also dehumanizing the perpetrators. Systems of domination demand resistance from those who benefit from it. As a white artist I make a case for my work from this perspective.” 

In 2020, Durant stated that he believed the Walker Art Center also should be held accountable for the harm to the Dakota community, as they have a responsibility to support artists’ whose work they exhibit as well as connect with the local community and prepare for the exhibition of any work. Durant seems to assert that it is the context in which this work was shown, and not the work itself, that is to blame for the trauma that it caused.

Written by Graham Routhier

Sam Durant created his piece Scaffold in 2012; it first travelled around Europe before its acquisition by the Walker Art Center in 2015 and installation in 2017.

Scaffold is a representation of 7 gallows of noteworthy executions, 5 in the history of the U.S. It first showed in Kassles, Germany then in Edinburgh, Scotland and finally The Hague, Netherlands before being installed in Minnesota’s Walker Art Center.1 One of the gallows represented was of the largest max execution in the history of the United States, the Mankato Execution. The Mankato gallow was used to kill 40 men who were members of the Dakota community, and was ordered by President Lincoln.2 The members were executed as a result of the Dakota war of 1862 where Native Americans fought settlers in Minnesota. 

In 2017 during Scaffold’s installation in the Walker Art Center’s sculpture garden, many members of the Dakota community and others saw the sculpture and began protesting it. The recreation of a traumatic symbol for the community by a white man who had no ties to the community was seen as a way of trivializing the suffering.3 The sculpture was also critiqued as it was again a highly visible act which reiterated the spectacle of the original execution. Along with that was the fact that the museum and Durant allowed people to walk all over the Scaffold and many community members saw this as a hugely disgraceful act.

After the initial protests the Walker museum director and staff (all white), members of the board trustees, city of Minneapolis staff Walker Art Center, members of the Dakota community, and Durant sat down in a meditation. The result was the decision to remove and subsequently have local Native American leaders burn the sculpture.4

At the time Durant offered an apology for the trauma he caused and stated his hopes for “a path for healing.” 3 years later in 2020 Durant released a 14 page essay titled Reflections on Scaffold after three years. It is in this essay where Durant works to absolve himself from the blame of the piece. He too combats the ideas that he, and members of the “majority”, should not be silenced as their silence does not necessarily promote the views of the “minority”. 5

It is worth including an excerpt from Durant’s article to help understand the line he walked while carefully portraying himself as a victim. 

“Contrary to some of my previous statements where I claimed to have had significant agency, I now see this as a misunderstanding of the dynamics among the stakeholders during the mediation. I want to be clear, now, not to give the impression that I was an actor with significant agency, or that I was somehow in control and wielding substantive decision-making power throughout the mediation process. Quite the opposite, I held relatively less power as the Dakota elders negotiated with Walker management, Minnesota state and Minneapolis city representatives over the fate of Scaffold. This is not to diminish my status as a member of the dominant population (i.e. white male benefiting from the status quo conditions of white supremacy) but to distinguish the specificities of my position as an artist and outsider within a group of others who wielded relatively more agency in that particular circumstance. I also want to be clear that the Dakota elders wielded their power masterfully, they were anything but victims. This can be understood clearly in that both the Dakota and the State of Minnesota got what they wanted, the removal of the sculpture and an end to the protests respectively. My agency mainly resided in the ability to agree to the removal of the work and to transfer copyright of Scaffold to the Dakota Oyate. This is not insignificant. And it does not constitute a suppression of my free speech as some have proposed. I freely agreed to the conditions above. At the time, I viewed my actions as a form of becoming, presaged on the possibility that what was happening could become part of a transformational process. At some point in the future we may be able to say retrospectively that what happened with the protests and removal of Scaffold in 2017 was a beginning rather than an ending (as I will propose in the conclusion).”

1 https://samdurant.net/files/downloads/SamDurant_ReflectionsonScaffold-2020.pdf
2 https://walkerart.org/magazine/learning-in-public-an-open-letter-on-sam-durants-scaffold
3 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/walker-sculpture-garden-to-remove-sam-durant-scaffold-977447
4 Ibid.
5 https://samdurant.net/files/downloads/SamDurant_ReflectionsonScaffold-2020.pdf

Questions for Consideration

Written by Graham Routhier

  • Durant states that he has not gotten enough recognition for giving the copyright of the art to the Dakota Oyate. Is the act a large act or simply small and unimportant? Should Durant be the one bringing it up?
    • My thoughts: In no way should Durant be the one bringing up how he should be getting recognition for doing something he sees as good in response to hurting others. It is an act of disregard to others, centering himself in a story which he was the one who in the first place put himself at the center of a story which was not his to tell. I personally too feel like the giving of the copyright is a small and insignificant performative gesture as it in fact changes nothing. He is giving back something he took, there is no thanks needed.
  • Durant states that he feels the Walker Art Museum failed his art piece by not contextualizing it and supporting it. “I believe it is vital for the Walker’s credibility to support artists and the work it acquires and exhibits. The Walker should reiterate the courageous decision to exhibit Scaffold and reiterate its failure of responsibility to connect with and prepare its community for such an artwork” Do you think this is a fair criticism? Should art be able to stand on its own? 
    • My thoughts: I do feel as if the Walker Art Museum itself failed in the placement of Scaffold, as it faced criticism for being a deeply emotional piece placed next to lighthearted sculptures and in an overly public place. Yet this failure was only after the museum failed to look to and speak with the community prior to installing Scaffold. However, even with contextualization Scaffold would not have been successful, as Durant co-opted and told a story which was not his to engage in. Some art “needs” (need is a hard word because what if the artist does not want contextualization) more information surrounding it to fully understand it and this is something that both the place who is exhibiting the art and the artist are responsible for. 
  • Is there a way for a person outside a community to respectfully make art that honors an experience? 
    • “ I have been accused of being racist because my work makes visible existing and historical systems of racial domination, blaming the messenger as it were. However, civil rights leaders have argued that white people must be active participants in dismantling white supremacy, that injustice harms all those involved, also dehumanizing the perpetrators.”- Durant1
      • Does art cross the boundary of active participation?
        • My thoughts: I believe that art must come from an individual’s experience and that there truly can be no boundary crossing of communities that is successful. As no one can completely relate and understand an experience that is not their own. 
  • Would Durants work have been more successful if it was paired with an analysis and set up within a different setting, not out in the open where people might not know the context?
    • My thoughts: Perhaps had Durants work been paired with analysis and situated within the parameters of the museum it would have been more “successful” but simply for the fact its audience would most likely have been restricted. Durants work itself was not one for him to have made and thus the correct move was for it to not be shown or made in the first place.
  • Who decides the meaning of a piece of art? How do intent and impact matter in relation to one another? 
    • “As an artist going forward, I’ve learned that I need to do much more education, be much more proactive about making clear what I want viewers to think about it”2
    • My thoughts: Art like language should be understood through a constructionist standpoint. The producer imposes a meaning which works in conjunction with a predetermined understanding due to cultural and historical context, yet each person due to their own life experiences may have a different interpretation. Art is in the eye of the beholder. Art is in the eye of the producer. 
  • Was there a way for the museum to respond that instead of only removing the art also added work that was centered around the Dakota experience?

1 https://samdurant.net/files/downloads/SamDurant_ReflectionsonScaffold-2020.pdf
2 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/walker-sculpture-garden-to-remove-sam-durant-scaffold-977447

Resources

Gathered by Annabelle Johnston and Graham Routhier

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