5
OPINION

Thursday, June 20, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
5
OPINION

I

n Costa Rica, there is a relaxed 
pace in both wild life and human 
nature. It is a place to truly take in 
the untouched world around you. When 
I visit, my favorite spots to explore are 
the empty miles of coast line, water-
falls or jungle pathways. Beaches are 
stripped away of human presence and 
footprints through the circuitous 
cycle of washing waves. To experience 
Costa Rica is to understand the beauty 
and importance of a place that values 
the natural world. This reverence for 
the earth can only be accomplished 
through the attention of people and 
the prevention of immense destruc-
tion that is relatively easy for humans 
to impose upon the natural world.
I have read about the vast envi-
ronmental programs that the Costa 
Rican government wants to imple-
ment, and it is inspiring for the rest 
of the world. It plans to become a 
plastic-free and carbon-free country 
through policy work and environ-
mental determination.
There have been a few conflict-
ing prediction dates on when it will 
all come together, but they are cur-
rently working on steps to reach a 
carbon-neutral state. Costa Rica is 
already one of the leading countries 
in renewable energy. Its renewable 
energy sources provide the country 
with about 99 percent of its energy 
needs. This dedication to sustainable 
energy resources allows the country 
to uphold its conservation efforts. 
Through the environmental plan, 
Costa Rica projects that it will get to 
a point of “zero net emissions.” This 
means that its conservation efforts, 
such as reforesting and managing 
land correctly, will offset the amount 
of emissions being produced. This 
balancing act means that the country 
is limiting carbon emissions as well 
as taking a proactive role in the man-
agement of its expansive rainforests 
and beaches.
In addition to its carbon-neutral 
advancements, the nation announced 
its plans to become completely plastic 
free by 2021. This would make it the 
first country to complete such a task. 
The country as a whole is working to 
replace plastics with biodegradable 
or sustainable alternatives in order 
to reduce the harmful impact of plas-
tics in landfills and oceans. While 
visiting Costa Rica, I saw this reduc-
tion of plastic across several fields. I 
noticed national advertisements for 
alternatives, as well as local efforts 
to reduce waste. Handmade post-
ers decorated the walls of cafés that 
promoted a plastic free environment. 
Coffee shops only provided composta-
ble materials and cardboard straws. 

Family-run souvenir shops skipped 
plastic bags and posted up phrases like 
“Do you really need a bag? Say NO to 
plastic bags.” It was a hopeful sight to 
see that the Costa Rican people really 
supported the country’s push for 
environmental change. This under-
scores that community level passion 
is instrumental in fueling the drive 
for governmental and nation-wide 
policy. 
Some skeptics have explained that 
these ambitious plans will be too dif-
ficult to achieve by 2021. In an article 
from Vox, Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, 
the country’s minister of environ-
ment and energy, explained that 
“some people have misunderstood 
the President’s declarations because 
we don’t plan to ban the use of fos-
sil fuels, we plan to phase them out 
through new policies and incentives 
so that eventually, down the road, 
they will be useless.” It is clear that 
this will not be a one-step process 
of simply banning everything that 
stands in the way of environmental 
purity.
Most of the country’s emissions 
come from the transportation sector, 
which is reportedly one of the hard-
est areas to decarbonize quickly. 
The high demand for transportation 
and private ownership could be due 
to the expansive lands and distance 
between cities. In addition to the 
large territory, I noticed that most 
roads wind through jungles and 
mountains, which seemingly makes 
it even more difficult and slow to 
travel by car. These long distances 
ultimately create a higher need for 
gas and thus higher rates of emis-
sions. The government’s fix for this 
is to incentivize cleaner options such 
as electric cars in order to reduce the 
carbon footprint in the transporta-
tion front. 
From international news to local 
observations, it is clear that this 
Central American country is trying 
to raise awareness and care for the 
beautiful environment it calls home. 
Though some of the government’s 
claims are difficult to achieve with-
out some large overhauls of emissions 
and product usage, the mere fact that 
it is instigating these changes is quite 
revolutionary. Costa Rica is looking 
to be the first country to achieve its 
goals and set policies and passion for 
the betterment of its people’s future. 
I only hope that the rest of the world 
looks to its intelligence and vigor in 
its strive for a sustainable nation and 
seeks to follow suit.

Costa Rican environmental policy is pura vida

ANNE ELSE | COLUMN

Anne Else can be reached at 

aelse@umich.edu.

AKAASH TUMULURI | COLUMN

T

he Met, MoMA, the 
DIA, even our very own 
UMMA: 
There’s 
one 
thing these so-called “high art” 
institutions have in common 
— the art is usually displayed 
on white walls. This is done 
intentionally to avoid distraction, 
to create a void-like space in 
which you can experience the art 
while expelling your prior biases, 
so you may receive each piece of 
art with a more open mind. Those 
in charge of the walls can’t seem 
to be influenced by their own 
design, however, as the problem 
with these white walls is that 
most of the art that adorns them 
is, in fact, white — and male. 
And there, again, we see the 
same story played on repeat, 
even in a world that supposedly 
prides itself on progressive open-
mindedness and being ahead of 
the curve.
A recent study done by a 
group of professors looked at 
18 major American art institu-
tions — including the Met, the 
Art Institute of Chicago and the 
DIA — and found 85 percent of 
the artists represented at these 
institutions were white. 87 per-
cent were male. Compared to the 
U.S. Census data — which shows 
only 60.7 percent of the Ameri-
can population self-identify as 
“white alone, not Hispanic or 
Latino” and 49.2 percent identify 
as male — those raw numbers 
are appalling. This same study 
found 60 percent of museum 
staff are women, though they 
only compose 43 percent of those 
in leadership or directorial roles. 
72 percent of museum staff are 
white.
The argument to this is that 
many of these museums include, 
and in some cases, prioritize his-
torical collections, and American 
museums are inclined toward 
procuring European historical 
art, which was generally made by 
white, male artists. And this was 
a time when women and people of 
color were marginalized from the 
art community. Let’s set aside the 

idea that prioritizing said Euro-
pean art encourages a limited 
view of history that legitimizes 
outdated Western ideals of race 
and gender power dynamics. 
Let’s instead take a look at the 
galleries that feature work from 
contemporary artists — post-
enlightenment era work that one 
would expect to be more open 
and representative — and we find 
that it isn’t. A study looking at 
the top 45 galleries in New York 
City found 78.4 percent of the 
artists represented by these gal-
leries were white, 85.4 percent of 
the American artists were white 
and 70 percent of all artists were 
male. This is a problem that per-
sists.

The confusing bit is that most 
art schools are, in fact, more 
diverse and female-dominated 
than this. Of the 125 students 
studying at the Yale School of 
Art, 70 are women — that’s 56 
percent. Our own School of Art 
and Design claims the “majority 
of our undergraduate students 
self-identify as women, a trend 
observed nationally and glob-
ally in schools of art & design.” 
Stamps also reported that 27.7 
percent of its students identi-
fied as part of a minority group, 
which, while still notably white, 
is not over 80 percent white, and 
is continuing to trend up.
Both the study on U.S. Muse-
ums and NYC galleries were 
done 
through 
crowdsourcing 
— taking starting points of data, 
such as gallery rosters or exhibi-
tion artist lists, and asking mem-

bers of the community to fill out 
the demographic information 
to the best of their knowledge. 
Now, this may seem like an 
unreliable method for procur-
ing data, but that is not a reason 
to dismiss these studies. First, 
the numbers of both studies have 
been updated upon both of their 
releases, after having been scru-
tinized by the public and cor-
rected for errors. Second, this 
represents at least a glimmer of 
data in an arena in which little to 
no demographic data is available. 
You can’t fix a problem you don’t 
know exists.
So how do we fix this? It starts 
at the top. Gallery owners and 
exhibition 
curators 
need 
to 
make a point of procuring work 
from people of color and women. 
While many art students are a 
part of these minority groups, 
they — rightfully so — may not 
feel they are able to “make it” in 
the gallery art world and there-
fore decide to pursue differ-
ent avenues with their degrees. 
Buying art from more margin-
alized communities emboldens 
those, with or without a degree, 
to realize their art can be on 
those white walls too. Art needs 
to be prioritized as a part of 
early education, which is, sadly, 
negatively trending with more 
and more art programs being 
cut in underprivileged commu-
nities — areas that are generally 
the most diverse.
Galleries and museums are 
slowly beginning to shake this 
antiquated representation, but 
it’s not happening anywhere 
near quickly enough. White 
walls are starting to feel con-
stricting, archaic, monotonous. 
So, hell, let’s paint the walls 
black, brown, pink or whatever 
color you’d like. It’s not quite the 
subtlety you think of in “high 
art,” but I’m over subtle. Those 
white walls could use a splash of 
color.

White art on white walls

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You can’t fix a 
problem you don’t 
know exists

Akaash Tumuluri can be reached at 

tumula@umich.edu.

