Today the National Coalition Against Censorship condemned the decision made by the Whitney Museum of American Art to unilaterally cancel a performance organized by the Curatorial Cohort of its Independent Study Program (ISP). The museum claims that, in a politically provocative introduction of the work at an unaffiliated venue several months earlier, one of the visiting artists violated the museum’s “community guidelines.”
The Whitney’s decision—made without consulting the program’s Curatorial Cohort and refusing to engage them in conversation—undermines the ISP’s mission to promote deep engagement with “contemporary issues through extended conversation and collaboration” and to incubate “innovative, sustainable, and activist practices.”
“By communicating that it can (and will) censor artworks if it disagrees with how their artists engage and think about politics, the Whitney Museum, a private cultural institution, mirrors the authoritarian approach of our current presidential administration,” stated Elizabeth Larison, Director of NCAC’s Arts & Culture Advocacy Program.
“Good art cannot flourish when a museum is standing over your shoulder enforcing policies that closely align with the dictates of a fascist government,” stated Dread Scott, a former participant in the Independent Study Program’s 1992/1993 cohort. “In demanding that artists and curators in its ISP program never make statements or curate art in violation of the Whitney’s “community guidelines,” the museum appears to want sanitized art and artists who attempt never to offend anyone. In this case, the museum is saying is that artists cannot be allowed to perform work that challenges people to value Palestinian lives and to not be complicit in war crimes and genocide. This is unacceptable.”
Left uncorrected, the effects of this censorship will reverberate far beyond the Whitney’s exhibitions and affiliated programs, cementing the perception that artists who want to address contested political topics may only do so in unprovocative, anodyne ways.
Read NCAC’s full letter to the Whitney Museum here:
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