Former curator sues Worcester Art Museum alleging discrimination, harassment

WORCESTER — A former curator is suing leaders of the Worcester Art Museum, accusing its director and the head of curatorial affairs of discrimination and retaliation action in employment in violation of Massachusetts General Laws.

According to a lawsuit filed July 18 in Worcester County Superior Court, Rachel Parikh, the former associate curator of the arts of Asia and the Islamic world, alleged she was “mocked and ridiculed because she is a brown-skinned woman of South Asian (Indian) descent and subjected to a hostile and offensive work environment and retaliation” during her employment at the museum.

Parikh, who has numerous art degrees including a Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, brought this action against Matthias Waschek, the museum’s director, and Claire Whitner, the museum’s director of curatorial affairs and curator of European art, as well as four officers of the Worcester Art Museum executive committee.

Parikh’s complaints include “racism and unwelcome and offensive behavior” from Waschek and his spouse during a brunch on November 2021 and a dinner on March 2022.

In addition, Parikh alleges the museum refused to promote her and treated new hires more favorably. She also expressed her fear of retaliation in the suit.

Parikh is the daughter of parents who immigrated to the United States from India in 1979.

In January 2020, the Worcester Art Museum offered Parikh a position of assistant curator of Asian art, with a starting salary of $50,000. She was appointed to the position on Feb. 18, 2020.

In January 2022, she was promoted to associate curator of the arts of Asia and the Islamic world with a salary of $63,000.

Parikh resigned on Sept. 16.

The lawsuit details several alleged incidents.

In March 2021, Whitner, who was Parikh’s direct superior, said to Parikh that Wascheck had complimented her on a recent virtual lecture the month before but, he said, “she (Parikh) needs to look like a curator,” according to the lawsuit.

Whitner then proceeded to tell Parikh that she needed to “zhuzh up,” that Parikh should “wear makeup, perhaps little earrings, a necklace, a ruffled blouse,” and “needed to look like a curator,” the lawsuit states.

Parikh defended herself and noted that she wore a black sweater and a silver necklace. Whitner continued to tell Parikh that she needed to wear makeup, according to the lawsuit.

Whitner’s comments to Parikh, a person of color, “suggested that she was being viewed as ‘unkempt’ and ‘primitive,’ ” the lawsuit states. There is no standard for what a curator should “look like,” the lawsuit continues.

“Telling the only curator of color at WAM that she needs to ‘look like a curator,’ had both sexist and racial connotations, especially since the curatorial field is predominantly white,” the lawsuit alleges.

In November 2021, a few days after Parikh moved to Worcester, Waschek and his spouse met Parikh for a “Welcome to Worcester” gathering at a local restaurant.

Questions over 'real name'

During the event, the lawsuit says, Waschek asked Parikh, “What is your real name?”

Parikh responded, “It is Rachel. That is my name.”

“Rachel is your real name?” Waschek continued. “Why is your name Rachel?”

She said, “It is a personal story.”

According to the lawsuit, Waschek’s questions were “deeply personal” and were tied to her parents’ immigration story and the racism they faced in the 1970s after moving to the United States.

Furthermore, Waschek and his spouse made references to a British TV comedy series, “Goodness Gracious Me!”, about an Indian family in Britain, and they told her one of the skits, in which the family goes to an English restaurant and they have a hard time pronouncing the waiter’s Western name. Waschek and his spouse acted out the scene with while “imitating Indian accents,” according to the lawsuit.

“These comments were unwelcome, offensive and the incident was humiliating and deeply disturbing…Over the past 24 years, nobody had ever spoken to her or humiliated her in this way until this brunch,” the lawsuit states.

In March 2022, Waschek invited Parikh at a dinner party at his home.

Waschek’s spouse at one point imitated the voice of an Indian woman at a Indian grocery store, according to the suit.

In addition, Waschek and his spouse asked “very personal and offensive questions” about Parikh’s upbringing, her parents’ background and economic situation and the languages that she knew. They asked her to speak in those languages. Parikh “felt extremely uncomfortable, offended and 'othered.' ”

The suit also cites several other incidences of “unwelcome and offensive behavior” during the March 2022 dinner party.

In May 2022, the museum hired an outside consultancy firm, LAM & Associates, to investigate Parikh’s claims of harassment and retaliation. In the firm’s final report, delivered in July, the authors said investigator Laurie Margolis could not substantiate Parikh's claims with other colleagues, but found her statements “credible.”

Waschek calls allegations false

In a statement to the T&G, Waschek characterized the allegations in the lawsuit as false: “I have been dismayed by the false allegations that have been made in this lawsuit and the homophobic tropes that are invoked.  I have worked hard over the last thirty plus years to build a reputation of professionalism and integrity.  As a gay man who has experienced discrimination first-hand, I have always held DEAI (Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, Inclusion) issues as a core value, and have sought to do my best to eliminate discrimination from the workplace and build a culture of inclusivity.  To read these patently false statements and to see my husband, who doesn’t even work at the Museum, dragged into it and similarly maligned, is staggering.”

Violation of policies cited

The lawsuit states that Margolis concluded Waschek had violated numerous Worcester Art Museum policies and that those violations created a “hostile and offensive work environment” in possible violation of state and federal law.

Parikh also said that she felt that Waschek had publicly outed her as the plaintiff in an investigation and disparaged her, which is an act of retaliation and is against the museum's policy.

“The Board had endorsed and approved the discriminatory and retaliatory behavior in complete disregard of Dr. Parikh’s rights by failing to take her seriously and refusing to hold Mr. Waschek accountable even though the outside investigator had concluded that Mr. Waschek’s behavior was completely unacceptable,” the lawsuit states.

On Sept. 16, 2022, Parikh resigned due to “the discriminatory and retaliatory treatment” she had endured while an employee at the museum, citing specifically Waschek’s “racist and offensive behavior,” the board’s sanctioning of that behavior, and the “resulting hostile and psychologically unsafe work environment.”

The Worcester Art Museum responded to the allegations in a statement.

"Worcester Art Museum remains committed to providing a workplace where everyone is treated with dignity and respect, so we take these allegations very seriously. The complaint filed in Worcester Superior Court reveals confidential HR information. This has put the Museum in a position where the only way to set the record straight would be to disclose confidential and private information in a manner that would violate our own policies and compromise the privacy of current and former employees. We look forward to addressing these claims through the legal process."

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Former Worcester Art Museum curator Rachel Parikh files lawsuit