The Tension Builds: On Dissent, Money, and Museums

The September 2025 roundtable, “Culture Under Pressure: Censorship, Pivots, and Alternative Practices”, was my first time joining a Tilt West roundtable. Upon invitation, I thought I was attending as an audience not a participant. Surprise! After getting over the notion of “preparedness” I quite enjoyed the thoughtful discussion that included questioning and allowed criticism to be kindly exchanged, IRL. It stretches your mind more.

I walked into the discussion convinced that money controls everything. And my varied work as a fundraising professional had everything to do with it. Money feels like the invisible, or not so invisible, hand that determines what can and cannot happen. What gets shown, who gets invited, what risk is worth taking. But was I skeptical of the idea that a museum could be a true space for freedom or dissent when so much of its function depends on financial access? I can’t really say. Maybe a little, yeah. What I can say is I strongly believe museums and larger institutions are meant to be agents for social change.

As the conversation unfolded, and I listened to others challenge and expand on the relationship between cultural institutions, DIY/alternative art spaces and artist autonomy, I found myself doubling down on museums. I left with the conviction that museums are indeed places for dissent. Not despite their money, access or constraints, but because of them.

The dialogue reminded me that dissent can exist in less obvious ways. Often, it’s subtle quiet disruption from within, other times more visible. But both types are necessary and always happening. Just not always at the pace we want. Like any other activism we see in a public space, museums are meant to hold multiple and opposing truths. This friction is the capacity for dissent. Exhibitions, each acquisition, down to the language on a label, can serve as acts of resistance. Just as in an alt/ DIY space, there are people in these places challenging dominant narratives, confronting inequities, and questioning the very structures they work in. I know people want to see it in order to know it’s happening, but it’s not that simple.

Museums carry a visibility and legitimacy that few other cultural platforms can. Their reach and permanence can amplify or neutralize dissent. (We want to see the former.) That visibility should bring a sense of duty more than risk-aversion. It offers the possibility for discourse at scale. It’s easy to frame institutions as monoliths, but the reality is more complex, and I think in a human-centered way. Museums are made up of people — curators, educators, artists, fundraisers — navigating expression and responsibility. The roundtable sparked inspiration that the existing tension offers hope and motivation to continue working towards change. If the possibility for dissent to be amplified is there, the work these people are doing is worth it. (I’m conflating dissent with change here, but that’s what we’re talking about!).

This fixation on dissent brought me to another point: the distinction between artist and place. We often assume that institutional constraint diminishes the autonomy of an artist and what they present within it. Sometimes it does. BUT, artist and place occupy different roles, and each serves a purpose. As such, artists question, push boundaries, and sometimes articulate something we may not yet have language for, despite the limitations of place or resources. The magic is sort of in the challenge, right? In turn, it’s the museum’s role to hold that expression in a broader and very public framework, and to preserve the meaning of it while contextualizing it for a wider community. This is dialogue —a chance for pressure, and for change.

On community, I cannot discount what alt and DIY spaces do – they embody, react, and respond with immediacy, explicit directness, and urgency. They really know how to meet the moment in a way we dream bigger institutions would. Everyone could recognize this in the roundtable and acknowledged their ability to exist and adapt as economic disparities rage on. Alt spaces incubate and amplify art and artists often before broad recognition or support. These spaces are part of creating cultural memory and signal what’s to come, serving a crucial function. It was said by someone at the roundtable in reference to museums and alt art spaces, “it is all a continuum.” Obviously, I could not agree more. The roles are not opposing. As someone moving through all these environments, DIY/ alt spaces are personally affirming and give me confidence, while there is a knowing of what’s culturally relevant when entering an institutional space, like a museum.

I jotted down the term “autonomous zones” from the prompt ahead of discussion. It’s a mindset, a practice, that could exist anywhere. It’s a decision and in relationship to self, to others, to place. Which brings me back to the question of funding and my initial thinking that it cannot be separated from control. That it dictates and shapes culture. (Hello, late-stage capitalism.) Not sure that this response clearly articulates how I managed to change my mind through this roundtable yet, nonetheless, it happened, and I did.

The dialogue helped me see that funding can serve as a positive force. It can raise awareness and enable public engagement. Yes, funding may introduce conditions. But perhaps those conditions are the very systems of accountability that artists and institutions must navigate, together. One needs freedom, one has responsibility. Maintaining the integrity to transcend the pressure is the goal. Money doesn’t automatically corrupt; it can also affirm the values of culture within a broader social framework. It can be a constraint or a catalyst, another form of pressure. It doesn’t always silence dissent; it makes it possible to stage it publicly.

Nothing exists in a binary! And no doubt, museums are challenged to maintain openness to dissent, to be fluid, stay flexy. But that reflects society right now too —the threat of loss, of change. At the roundtable, it was rewarding to be amongst people who agreed and disagreed with openness, without collapsing into hostility. How refreshing. I’m surprised by how much I’m going to bat for museums in this response. Ultimately, dissent in a museum isn’t always opposition, it's engagement, it's care, it's recognition that to represent many truths is no risk at all.