Dear Onyx Fine Arts Collective Board members,
After much soul-searching I’ve decided it’s time for me to leave the Onyx board. Quite frankly, I’m tired of Ernie’s unwillingness to be held accountable to the board. I’m tired of it being run as if it’s his private enterprise rather than a non-profit. Being a board member, especially of a non-profit, carries fiduciary responsibility and accountability. To tolerate the lack of financial reporting, the misogynistic behavior toward women, the “slow walk” of any idea that’s not Ernie’s is not only insulting, but institutionally irresponsible.
For two years, Ernie insisted Onyx keep paying the rent at Pacific Place for a gallery in a building that was closed to the public. He literally groveled to stay in that space, despite how badly we were treated there (remember having to vacate a larger space for the smaller one on one week’s notice?). And despite the board’s consistent insistence that the gallery be closed during COVID, he insisted and “slow walked” our requests to the tune of nearly $20,000 lost in rent and utility payments for a space we had no access to. However now, in dealing with Arte Noir, Ernie is insisting on provisions to the agreement he never once asked for with Pacific Place. Instead of recognizing the incredible gift Arte Noir has offered Onyx and treating Arte Noir as a collaborator, he’s treating them as an adversary. The Arte Noir team has gone out of their way to customize the gallery space to Onyx’s requests, including a very expensive work table. Maria has tried to act as mediator and facilitator, as she volunteered to do from the beginning of this process, but she gets marginalized and treated as an annoyance rather than having her expertise valued. Why didn’t Earnie make similar demands when dealing with the management of Pacific Place that he is now making of Arte Noir?
For seven years, I’ve put my heart and soul into moving this organization out of the backwaters it was stuck in and into becoming a true service organization that can create a pipeline for Northwest Black artists to develop their voice and become professionals. I’ve worked my contacts to give Onyx a larger platform, lifted it up in places it was never seen before, because I believed in the mission. I spent hundreds of hours staffing the gallery, organized and held two years’ worth of artist talks, created and edited all the video now available on Onyx’s YouTube channel, handled social media, wrote grants, used my personal Dropbox space to host files, edited the text of two books, created and provided financial reports for 2 years, and more. All without asking for anything other than respect.
It’s clear to me now that Onyx will never be anything more than a gallery. While that may seem like enough, it isn’t. We know from experience how few of the artists we work with know how to build a portfolio, meet with a gallerist, or market their work. Few understand the many avenues available for visual artists to find sustainable work. Fewer still understand how to get commissioned work or grants. As long as Onyx is just a gallery and in the hands of a handful of men over 70, with no succession plan, no annual elections, and no accountability structure, it will eventually fail and, like other gallery-type spaces before it, it will disappear. People will pat themselves on the back for what it was and another generation of Black artists will have no place to grow their work or learn the business of being artists. That’s not what I signed up to do.
I’ve done my best to bring smart, talented, effective potential leaders into the organization, but they continue to be marginalized and disrespected when they actually use their talents. When they stand up for themselves, they are gaslighted. Instead of solving the structural problems, members of the board continue to demand people be "nice," confusing a demand for equal treatment and accountability with not being "nice," and never recognizing how that call for “niceness” is being used as manipulation to silence those who are asking for accountability or disagree with Earnie. He, on the other hand, gets away with displaying an external false charm while his actions, as we saw with the recent incident at Arte Noir, are demeaning and disrespectful, especially of women.
While it would be easy to blame Earnie for all of this, it’s the rest of the board who allows it to continue, who lets him get away with his assertion of control over the most mundane operations of the organization while requiring no accountability. While there are things to be grateful to Earnie for, I cannot be silent about his unwillingness to do the things required to serve and support our wide community of artists, the misogyny of his actions, and his need for absolute control, all evident in the recent situation that caused a valued member of the Onyx community to walk away from this board AND take his business elsewhere. Following those events, Sharon, Maria and I have tried to set up a board retreat to bring all these issues forward and get them resolved. But Earnie canceled subsequent board meetings and, at our last meeting, the discussion about the retreat was put at the bottom of the agenda and almost didn’t get addressed because of a “lack of time.” Again, the slow walk.
After consulting with friends and family, much as it pains me I believe continuing on this board has become a potential personal and fiduciary liability that I’m no longer willing to take.
I will send a separate email with logon information for MailChimp, YouTube and other accounts I’ve managed. I intend to purge my Dropbox of all Onyx related files at the end of this month and have put them on a flash drive that I’ll be happy to turn over to Jay or Ashby. I recommend someone set up a free Google Workspace for Nonprofits (GWN) and transfer all the Onyx files to that space. Let me know what the new Google account name is so I can also transfer ownership of all the YouTube videos as well. Please remove my name from the Board roster on the website.
...Lola
After much soul-searching I’ve decided it’s time for me to leave the Onyx board. Quite frankly, I’m tired of Ernie’s unwillingness to be held accountable to the board. I’m tired of it being run as if it’s his private enterprise rather than a non-profit. Being a board member, especially of a non-profit, carries fiduciary responsibility and accountability. To tolerate the lack of financial reporting, the misogynistic behavior toward women, the “slow walk” of any idea that’s not Ernie’s is not only insulting, but institutionally irresponsible.
For two years, Ernie insisted Onyx keep paying the rent at Pacific Place for a gallery in a building that was closed to the public. He literally groveled to stay in that space, despite how badly we were treated there (remember having to vacate a larger space for the smaller one on one week’s notice?). And despite the board’s consistent insistence that the gallery be closed during COVID, he insisted and “slow walked” our requests to the tune of nearly $20,000 lost in rent and utility payments for a space we had no access to. However now, in dealing with Arte Noir, Ernie is insisting on provisions to the agreement he never once asked for with Pacific Place. Instead of recognizing the incredible gift Arte Noir has offered Onyx and treating Arte Noir as a collaborator, he’s treating them as an adversary. The Arte Noir team has gone out of their way to customize the gallery space to Onyx’s requests, including a very expensive work table. Maria has tried to act as mediator and facilitator, as she volunteered to do from the beginning of this process, but she gets marginalized and treated as an annoyance rather than having her expertise valued. Why didn’t Earnie make similar demands when dealing with the management of Pacific Place that he is now making of Arte Noir?
For seven years, I’ve put my heart and soul into moving this organization out of the backwaters it was stuck in and into becoming a true service organization that can create a pipeline for Northwest Black artists to develop their voice and become professionals. I’ve worked my contacts to give Onyx a larger platform, lifted it up in places it was never seen before, because I believed in the mission. I spent hundreds of hours staffing the gallery, organized and held two years’ worth of artist talks, created and edited all the video now available on Onyx’s YouTube channel, handled social media, wrote grants, used my personal Dropbox space to host files, edited the text of two books, created and provided financial reports for 2 years, and more. All without asking for anything other than respect.
It’s clear to me now that Onyx will never be anything more than a gallery. While that may seem like enough, it isn’t. We know from experience how few of the artists we work with know how to build a portfolio, meet with a gallerist, or market their work. Few understand the many avenues available for visual artists to find sustainable work. Fewer still understand how to get commissioned work or grants. As long as Onyx is just a gallery and in the hands of a handful of men over 70, with no succession plan, no annual elections, and no accountability structure, it will eventually fail and, like other gallery-type spaces before it, it will disappear. People will pat themselves on the back for what it was and another generation of Black artists will have no place to grow their work or learn the business of being artists. That’s not what I signed up to do.
I’ve done my best to bring smart, talented, effective potential leaders into the organization, but they continue to be marginalized and disrespected when they actually use their talents. When they stand up for themselves, they are gaslighted. Instead of solving the structural problems, members of the board continue to demand people be "nice," confusing a demand for equal treatment and accountability with not being "nice," and never recognizing how that call for “niceness” is being used as manipulation to silence those who are asking for accountability or disagree with Earnie. He, on the other hand, gets away with displaying an external false charm while his actions, as we saw with the recent incident at Arte Noir, are demeaning and disrespectful, especially of women.
While it would be easy to blame Earnie for all of this, it’s the rest of the board who allows it to continue, who lets him get away with his assertion of control over the most mundane operations of the organization while requiring no accountability. While there are things to be grateful to Earnie for, I cannot be silent about his unwillingness to do the things required to serve and support our wide community of artists, the misogyny of his actions, and his need for absolute control, all evident in the recent situation that caused a valued member of the Onyx community to walk away from this board AND take his business elsewhere. Following those events, Sharon, Maria and I have tried to set up a board retreat to bring all these issues forward and get them resolved. But Earnie canceled subsequent board meetings and, at our last meeting, the discussion about the retreat was put at the bottom of the agenda and almost didn’t get addressed because of a “lack of time.” Again, the slow walk.
After consulting with friends and family, much as it pains me I believe continuing on this board has become a potential personal and fiduciary liability that I’m no longer willing to take.
I will send a separate email with logon information for MailChimp, YouTube and other accounts I’ve managed. I intend to purge my Dropbox of all Onyx related files at the end of this month and have put them on a flash drive that I’ll be happy to turn over to Jay or Ashby. I recommend someone set up a free Google Workspace for Nonprofits (GWN) and transfer all the Onyx files to that space. Let me know what the new Google account name is so I can also transfer ownership of all the YouTube videos as well. Please remove my name from the Board roster on the website.
...Lola
