Early last Tuesday morning (March 6), the Kalamazoo City Commission voted 5-1 to remove Fountain of the Pioneers. The decision follows a flurry of recent protests by local activist groups, indigenous people, residents and historians. NCAC is concerned by the swiftness of this decision and cautions that such determinations should not be made in hasty emotional response to complaints.
For the latest edition of our Arts Advocacy Podcast, we talked to the bi-coastal artist and photographer Savannah Spirit. Her sun-drenched nude self portraits are repeatedly flagged and removed as ‘obscene’ or ‘inappropriate’ by Instagram and Facebook. This interview discusses her frustration with social media and its necessity to artists working today.
Artspace, the self-described "non-profit real estate developer for the arts," creates affordable live-work spaces in a world where such spaces are rapidly disappearing. However, on more than one occasion, Artspace has censored works exhibited by residents on their premises. The most recent incident occurred in East Minneapolis.
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has joined with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) to express concern about the state of freedom of expression at Polk State College.
In a landmark case heard in Federal district court in Brooklyn, a judge has ruled that a New York real estate developer must pay millions in damages to a group of 21 graffiti artists to compensate for destroying their work under the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA).
Sunset Park High School in Brooklyn, NY removed a work of student art last week after complaints that its message was offensive. NCAC opposes allowing a "hecker's veto" to chill this student's right to free expression.
After an artist was censored in Norfolk, VA, the public agency who shut down her show cancels all future art exhibitions.
If a recent policy change is not reversed, art by Guantanamo detainees may be permanently removed from public view when John Jay College's exhibition closes next week.
A year into one the most divisive presidencies Americans have seen in their lifetimes, free speech is in crisis. NCAC's Director of Programs looks at the most representative issues affecting artistic freedom in the first year of the Trump administration.
During a year of marked ideological divisions, the right to free expression has been challenged by everyone from the alt-right to the far left. Our core values have been attacked by activists across the political spectrum. In this tumultuous year, we commend the allies who refuse to be silenced and continue to defend the right to free speech and its value to our society.
A sneaker and apparel company has bricked over an iconic Harlem mural as they re-brand the exterior of their new store. Community members are concerned about the erasure of this tribute to the Harlem Renaissance and the the artists living and working in Harlem today and are questioning its legality.
More than 10,000 people have signed an online petition demanding the removal of a Balthus painting in response to “the current climate around sexual assault and allegations that become more public each day.” The Met has refused to remove the work.
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) vehemently objects to the violation of the public’s right to access art by Guantanamo detainees and thus fully participate in the political conversation around Guantanamo. The new directive also violates the human rights of the detainees under international norms and further destruction of the work would impermissibly suppress documents of historical importance.
Johns Sims was finally able to present his work, "Confederate Flag: A Public Hanging", after years of forced adaptation and abridgment.
Paul Rucker's traveling exhibition REWIND, an urgently relevant multi-media installation that addresses the history of racial injustice in America, was closed to the public by York College of Pennsylvania, less than one week into its run. Paul sat down with NCAC to discuss the incident.
The AJHS has sent a chilling and un-democratic message that art and voices that dissent from pro-Israel orthodoxy are not to be tolerated.
Every time threats of violence succeed in silencing expression, our public sphere is impoverished and even more polarized.
In August, Artspace, a non-profit organization that manages spaces around the country where artists live and work, ordered the removal of an exhibition from the lobby of its property in Everett, Washington. The exhibition contained works by one of its residents, Steven Leyba, an artist of Native American and Jewish descent. Some of the works in the exhibition featured the swastika [...]
The brief argues that freedom of speech includes the ability to facilitate the free international exchange of people and ideas.
Artist Steven Leyba was ordered to remove his paintings despite the fact he was using the symbol to reclaim its original significance in Native American culture.
Efforts to blacklist an artist over a controversial painting are not conducive to the goal of overcoming racial inequity.
Were institutions like Lincoln Center to yield to calls for cancellation coming from the BDS movement or elsewhere, any ensuing conversation would be much impoverished and further polarized.
documenta 14, an art festival occurring every 5 years, puts the issue of book censorship front and center this year.
The discussion has brought to light the enduring lack of representation of Native artists in the art historical canon, in art museum exhibitions and in collections. However, it has also shown us a way forward.
The organizations express grave concern that the Executive Order will have a broad and far-reaching impact on artists’ freedom of movement and, as a result, will seriously inhibit creative freedom, collaboration, and the free flow of ideas.
The Walker Art Center has responded to our criticism arguing "NCAC has placed undue emphasis on the work’s material structure over its concept." Read our new response.
"The fact is that, for hundreds of years, this particular play has been understood to be a critique of political violence, not an endorsement of it."
NCAC has issued a statement signed by several national and international organizations, opposing the Walker's decision to dismantle and destroy the controversial sculpture.
Mintcheva's essay examines and argues for the value of free expression in light of recent controversies over art and racially sensitive content, as well as over cultural appropriation, which have left people to question the usefulness of an absolutist defense of free speech.
While critiquing or protesting artworks is a vital part of a healthy democratic society, cultural institutions who bow to demands to remove or destroy works that engage with contentious political or social issues endanger our ability to maintain a public sphere where ideas and societal problems can be freely identified and discussed.
NCAC argues that keeping children from viewing artistic representations of nudes does not ‘protect’ them; rather, it imposes the religion-based view that the nude human body is shameful.
The letter demands a public apology from the City of Burnsville and urges the City to develop a formal policy governing artistic programming at the Ames Center to ensure it is in compliance with First Amendment requirements.
The message government is communicating appears to be that young people's opinions concerning such issues are not respected and don't matter.
A profile of muralist Mike Alewitz describes how his radical politics infuses his work and left him open to many incidents of censorship.
The play offers a perspective on the experience of growing up biracial -- or "mulatto," a dated term used to describe a person with one black and one white parent.
In the aftermath of the Whitney Biennial controversy, NCAC has aggregated the best commentary and opinions on the fraught but necessary incident.
The decision to cancel the play was understandable, given the controversy around the photo, but was it the best decision that could have been made?
Throughout March, to celebrate Women's History Month, NCAC will be spotlighting censorship cases involving women and women's issues on its crowdsourced wiki, Censorpedia.
NCAC is urging a Maryland school district to allow its teachers to display a series of posters promoting diversity and inclusion in America after administrators ordered their removal over concerns of political bias.
The posters were deemed to break the school's policy that forbids classroom materials that attempt to sway the political opinions of students.
