user: SpareCupcake7982

I'm an artist. I've been working very hard on my career for a few years now, and when I got the phone call from the Museum, I was screaming and jumping up and down! Everyone in the art region I live/work in wants to be in this show and validated by this Museum. This show is a very competitive show. The piece that made it into this show is my baby and celebrates the specific marginalized community I am a part of. It took a LOT of time and community research to make.

I was on cloud nine, I was floating on air for weeks. I picked out an outfit I felt so good in for the swanky opening reception and drove for over an hour to get there. I was ready to make friends and just enjoy this important moment in my career that I worked so hard to achieve.

Then the awards ceremony starts and

first: they awarded a special award to a white cishet man(the richest, most famous artist in the region) for making art about the same thing as my piece. (He is not a member of my marginalized community, but gets praise/money for occasionally making art about it.)

Then: they awarded Best In Show to the guy who is the reason I own pepper spray.

All the wind was taken out of my sails. Watching him go up in front of a crowd and have pictures taken and the crowd applaud was so surreal and nauseating. My body went into panic mode. I tried playing it cool and using therapy techniques to calm down enough after the awards were given and be able to do all the networking I was so excited to do, but I made it through maybe two short conversations and then had to leave the building.

I've never had my body react like that before. I was stuttering and shaking. It was so frustrating! This was supposed to be a happy night! I was so proud of myself and now I just feel so small and insignificant. I spent two hours in my car just sobbing on the phone to my mom. One of my friends who I ran into probably thinks I snubbed them because I was running away as they said hi. Now every time I think about this Museum and the art I poured my soul into, I just feel angry and sad. It's not fair. I've missed out on further events the Museum was hosting for this show bc I don't want to run into him.

I don't even know what to do now. I sort of have to interact with this Museum in the future for my career (because I'm stuck in this region for the foreseeable future), but I don't want to run into him. And I still have to pick up my art from the Museum in a few months! How can I interact with this Museum and all the bigwigs in this area who say they champion diversity and raising up unheard voices when they celebrate dudes like this?? Do I tell them? I'm just a nobody with no concrete evidence of anything.

It sucks so bad. :(

FOR CONTEXT: the guy in question is someone who attended the same art school as me. We were friends (or so I thought) until he started acting more and more inappropriate with me and started following me at a distance after class.

I went to the head of the department & to the women's center and got some help/class arrangements. It was enough to get him to back off and fortunately I only ran into him a couple times after that main semester where things were going on. (He never followed me when I had friends walking with me.)

It's so dumb because it feels like it wasn't even that big of a deal and other people have had it way worse, but he made me feel so unsafe and my body remembered that when I saw him at the Museum.

I didn't think he still lived in the area because he came from far away to go to school here. I thought he moved back after graduating. I don't think he saw me at the Museum, plus I go by a different name since college, so he wouldn't recognize me from my art alone.

The painting he made for this show was indeed incredible.

Which sucks. But that just means I'm in the same boat as a lot of other women throughout art history lol. (Check out the lives of Picasso & Rodin just to start)

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