Save Metro Arts

Metro Arts was Nashville's first gov't dept. to have a cultural equity statement written to guide its work. It is thorough, and yet Commission and Staff leadership have failed at following the statement for its own staff, including that Metro Arts will “commit to exposing and unraveling [inequity] through our own leadership, practices and policies,” and that Metro Arts will specifically “Commit to frequent and on-going, agency-wide honest conversations about race, class, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age and income status.”
Multiple allegations of intimidation and discrimination have been made against former leadership as well as current Interim ED Ian Myers.
In the meantime, Mr. Myers has retaliated against a current employee for filing a complaint about this discrimination by threatening her with termination using the "official channel" of a disciplinary hearing.
Commission Chair Jim Schmidt has provided unwavering support of former ED Vincent and current Interim ED Myers, never questioning their roles in these allegations and elevating Myers to ED while being named in multiple complaints.
This discrimination only highlights the hypocrisy of the Metro Arts Commission requiring cultural equity statements and work from grant recipients (which is important) when they don’t hold their own leadership accountable for their treatment of their staff and the artists they fund.
The Arts Commission has fully lost the trust of the arts community. It is hard to believe they can carry out the important work of - as the mission statement says - “ensuring that ALL Nashvillians have access to a creative life,” when that does not even apply to Metro Arts Staff.