Top 40 Threats to Free Speech Right Now!
To celebrate NCAC's 40th Anniversary, we take a look at 40 threats to free speech.
Damien Hirst’s “The Virgin Mother” Under Fire In Long Island. Protect Interesting Public Art!
Damien Hirst's The Virgin Mother is a large piece about even larger subjects: life, death, birth, and humanity. But is it too large for Old Westbury, L.I.? The Virgin Mother was previously displayed (there are several casts) at Lever House in Manhattan, outside London's Royal Academy, and on Fontvieille Harbour, Monaco. But now that it landed in posh Old Westbury, [...]
Read an excerpt from Svetlana Mintcheva’s essay in the new “Handbook on Intellectual Freedom”
We're excited about the just-released Library Juice Press Handbook of Intellectual Freedom because, in addition to being a landmark resource on the state of free inquiry and expression, it features a new essay by NCAC's Svetlana Mintcheva on censorship, past and present, in the arts. Library Juice talks about the need for this handbook on their blog: The existing reference literature on intellectual [...]
Kennesaw State reinstates art installation, but is there more trouble brewing in Academia? Trigger warnings.
Kennesaw State finally formally announced the reinstatement of Ruth Stanford's “A Walk in the Valley” to the opening exhibition at the new Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art. The piece, a commissioned work about Georgia author Corra Harris' homestead, was taken down two weeks ago, shortly before the formal opening on Saturday, March 1st.
Kennesaw State University To Restore Censored Artwork
The National Coalition Against Censorship received word that Ruth Stanford's "A Walk in the Valley" has been restored to the Kennesaw State University's Zuckerman Museum of Art. KSU had said “A Walk in the Valley” was pulled because it did not fit the "celebratory nature" of the museum's opening.
South Park Video Game Sticks it to Censors Over Alien Probing
The the oft-delayed and highly anticipated role-playing video game South Park: The Stick of Truth is finally hitting the shelves next week. However, a leaked reviewer’s guide for European journalists has revealed that the version of the game that pub...
Artist’s Response to Sandy Hook Pulled from Art Center
We urge the Center to reconsider the exclusion of Linda Cunningham’s timely and powerful "School Days" piece, and adopt exhibition policies that demonstrate a respect for the creative freedom of their members
Why is this artist’s work “too controversial” for an art center exhibition?
Paul Carter/The Register-Guard As a dues-paying member of the Emerald Art Center in Springfield, OR, Linda Cunningham prepared a piece of work for the monthly members' show. The "pastoral" works of other members were accepted without incident, but Cunningham's three-dimensional piece was deemed "too controversial" and rejected by the executive board of the Art Center, according to The [...]
Happy Nude Year! Lawsuit Forces Display of Nudes Until January 17
Court settlement extends San Bernardino County Government Center exhibit, to compensate for time during which paintings had been removed. Today NCAC and and the ACLU of Southern California were please to see the final court settlement that extends the exhibition time of three recently restored paintings at the San Bernardino County Government Center. The extended display period will compensate for [...]
*UPDATE: VICTORY!* ACLU files lawsuit to uphold artistic freedom in San Bernardino County
**Victory! San Bernardino County Restores Artwork! NCAC congratulates artists, community members, and ACLU for defending First Amendment principles** Read the whole story in the San Bernardino Sun. This past September, NCAC received a call from an artist outraged at the removal of three paintings from the Hispanic National Heritage Art Exhibition at the San Bernardino County Government Center. Apparently [...]
NCAC Letter To Herberger Theater Center Regarding Cancellation of Prime Example Exhibition
NCAC Calls on Herberger Theater Center to Apologize for Cancelled Show and Commit to Guidelines Supporting Free Expression.
Latino Artists’ Nudes Restored at San Bernardino Government Center
NCAC and ACLU-SC ask the county board to immediately restore artwork and establish best practices for managing future controversies in accordance with First Amendment principles.
Street Artist Essam Talks About His Arrest, Importance of Artistic Freedom
Essam Political street artist Essam Attia, 30, was arrested last November for planting dozens of fake public service ads around Manhattan claiming that the New York Police Department (NYPD) used drones to spy on citizens. The pubic was quick to react, launching an online Free Essam campaign and a petition asking that all charges be dropped. We caught [...]
Photographer Betsy Schneider on the Kohler Arts Center Banning Her Work
Betsy Schneider Are photos of a naked child offensive? Some folks in Sheboygan, WI, thought Betsy Schneider’s images of her growing daughter were offensive and recently pressured the Michael Kohler Arts Center to remove them from a group show. NCAC spoke to Schneider, an award-winning photographer, about her reaction to the ban, her now-teenage daughter’s response to all [...]
Kansas Board of Regents Must Overturn Exhibit Takedown
NCAC and the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri sent a letter urging the board to restore the art exhibition program at Dykes Library, located in the Kansas University Medical Center.
Chris Brown’s Monstery House, Graffiti as Art and Other First Amendment Questions
Last week brought us one of those rare occasions where Perez Hilton reported on the invocation of First Amendment rights, as Chris Brown declared he would fight a Los Angeles citation. Brown was fined $376 for "unpermitted and excessive signage" for graffiti he had painted on the outside of his Hollywood Hills home, after neighbors complained that the pictures terrified [...]
Report to UN High Commission: Artistic Freedom Must Be Protected or Democracy Suffers
GENEVA, May 31, 2013–Today the Special Rapporteur on cultural rights, Farida Shaheed, delivered a landmark report on artistic freedom and expression to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. Shaheed is the first Independent Expert on cultural rights appointed by the U.N. The U.S-based National Coalition Against Censorship lauded the report as an important milestone for international mobilizing in support of free artistic expression as a human right.
NY Art School Boxes Student Sperm Project
The recent rather heavy-handed treatment of Marc Bradley Johnson’s MFA thesis project at New York’s School of Visual Art (SVA) raises some interesting concerns—especially for an institution that aims to play a leadership role in the bio-art movement. Johnson’s project consists of a refrigerator containing 68 vials of his sperm arranged on a grid. The artist originally intended to give [...]
On the First Day of Censorship, the Censors Gave to Me…
The Twelve Days of Censorship No art in Newark library This post is part of our Twelve Days of Censorship series, reporting the gifts of the Ghosts of Censors Past and Present in honor of the holiday season. On the First Day of Censorship, the Censors Gave to Me... no art in Newark Public Library. The Newark Public Library is [...]
National organizations, artists and academics protest removal of artwork from John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Censorship of Betsy Schneider's "Quotidian" in response to complaints jeopardizes the institution's integrity and commitment to artistic freedom.
Free Speech and LGBTQ Rights Groups Oppose Cancellation of Exhibit at Stonewall National Museum and Archives
Artists and action groups join NCAC in letter to museum. Leave your comment of support!
Art, Porn and Censorship: the Mansfield Art Center (OH) Covers up Painting
A painting, included in a juried exhibition show at the Mansfield Art Center in Ohio, was partially covered with black paper. The painting had been selected for inclusion in the show, but the management of the Art Center decided that the outside edges of the work, which were covered with clippings from pornographic magazines, should not be seen by anyone. Sans [...]
Don’t Let Them Eat Cake
Sweden’s minister of culture has been in the global news spotlight recently, and not for her nation's propensity for neo-noir literature. Minister Lena Adelson Liljeroth was invited to attend and speak at World Art Day at Stockholm’s Museum of Modern Art. The engagement took a turn for the bizarre when Liljeroth was invited by artist Makode Linde to cut into [...]
Colorado Academic Center Institutes Censorship Regime After Controversy Over Student Art Work
Until a few weeks ago, the Arts Building at the Aurari Higher Education Center in Denver featured several walls emblazoned with the kindly decree to “Post Artwork Here.” However, in light of recent controversy over the graphic work that student Estee Fox hung on one of these walls, the “authorities” (that blissfully meaningless blanket term) have rechristened these areas as [...]
Art Succeeds in Starting a Conversation, But Some Call for the Cancellation of the Project
Update: Lawrence, KS officials have banned the project, saying the proposed art installation would amount to animal cruelty. The Kansas code allows “with respect to farm animals” for “normal or accepted practices of animal husbandry, including the normal and accepted practices for the slaughter of such animals for food or by-products and the careful or thrifty management of one's herd [...]
NCAC and FIRE Issue Joint Letter To Villanova U. on Cancellation of Tim Miller Artist-In-Residency
We are calling on Villanova to reverse this decision and the damage it will cause to academic freedom within the university community
NCAC joins international group protecting freedom of artistic expression
In a networked world, it is important that we work in solidarity to promote global artistic freedom.
MECA Outmaneuvers MOCHA, Shows Palestinian Youth Art Across From Original Gallery
From Indybay.org: The Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) and supporters protested the decision by the Museum of Children's Art (MOCHA) to cancel the exhibit "A Child's View From Gaza" under pressure from Zionist organizations. MOCHA held firm that they would not allow the exhibit. MECA announced that the exhibit would open on the originally scheduled date anyway, outside rather than [...]
Mayor Cancels Rocky Horror Production, Calls It Too Risque
NCAC participating organization The Dramatists Guild protests the cancellation of a community theater production of The Rocky Horror Show in Carrollton Georgia.
Cancelling Palestinian Kids’ Art Exhibit a Shameful Violation of Free Speech Principles
Oakland Children's Museum incident the latest in a pattern of political interest groups silencing open critique and discourse on conflict in the Middle East.
Photo by Noah Berger for the San Francisco Chronicle
On M.F. Hussain, Free Expression, and Pluralism
Nudity in art appears to be controversial whether exhibited in a public space in the US, or created by India’s most renowned artist. And so is the artistic treatment of religious icons. India’s greatest contemporary artist, M. F. Hussain, died June 9th, 2011, at 95, still in self-imposed exile caused by the hundreds of legal cases filed against him in [...]
Victory Over Censorship in Colorado
One more public exhibition space forgot about their obligations under the First Amendment and removed artwork they found subjectively "offensive." In April this happened in California, this time it was Colorado. To their credit, however, local officials quickly corrected their mistake when reminded by NCAC's letter that it is not the role of public officials to shield the eyes of the public from work because they subjectively decides it is not “family-friendly.”
NCAC Covering Smithsonian Flashpoints Forum On Censorship
We'll post live updates from the much-anticipated "Flashpoints and Fault Lines" forum, planned in the aftermath of the censoring of David Wojnarowicz's "A Fire In My Belly" from the National Portrait Gallery in late 2010
Christian Extremists Vandalize Art — Again and Again
Last October we reported about an incident at the Loveland Museum/Gallery in Colorado where a woman ripped into a lithograph after she busted the artwork’s plexiglass case with a crowbar. She did this because God told her to do it. In her explanation of the vandalism, Kathleen Folden refers to the similar destruction of Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ in Australia [...]
Worldwide Protests For Ai Weiwei’s Release
Demonstrators all over the world were sitting outside Chinese embassies on Sunday demanding the release of the detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.
Victory! Marin Civic Center Recinds Censorship Of Painting
After receiving a letter from NCAC and First Amendment Project, Civic Center requests that the nude painting be reinstated to art show
NCAC and FAP Send Letter To Marin Civic Center re: Nudes Censorship
As blogged earlier this week, admins at the Marin Civic Center censored a painting of a nude female from an annual art show because an employee claimed it constituted sexual harassment. This morning, NCAC and the First Amendment Project sent Marin County a letter to show them the error of their ways. In it, we sought to explain that: [...]
Letter From NCAC and FAP To Marin Civic Center In Response To Art Censorship
As organizations dedicated to promoting the First Amendment right to free speech, including freedom of artistic expression, we are deeply concerned about the removal of Sylvia Cossich Goodman’s work from the annual Marin Arts Council member show at the County Civic Center. Your decision, as a government employee, to remove an artwork from an exhibition held at a public space raises serious First Amendment concerns. We urge the Civic Center to immediately put the work back on display and, in the future, draft exhibition policies that are consistent with First Amendment principles.