The National Coalition Against Censorship has written to the Santa Barbara Unified School District in California following news reports that Andres Serrano's artwork "Immersion (Piss Christ)" was removed from the curriculum of a course at Dos Pueblos High School. The district removed the image because some community members found it hurtful. NCAC urges the district to return the image [...]
Image caption: Taravat Talepasand, Demons, Dictators, Blasphemy, and Man, 2016. The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and the College Art Association (CAA) have contacted Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to express concerns about how its campus gallery handled the controversy surrounding an exhibition entitled TARAVAT. The college's efforts to address local concerns have profoundly impacted the artistic freedom [...]
Photo Credit: Clifford McDonald, Good Trouble, 2023 The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) are alarmed by reports of the apparently politically motivated censorship of an art exhibition entitled "Embracing Kindness" at the State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota’s Bradenton campus. Please see our letter attached, which outlines our concerns below: Click [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and the College Art Association (CAA) expressed their deep concern with Arkansas Tech University’s handling of its on-campus exhibition, Artifacts, by artist Dominique Simmons. According to the artist's statement, Artifacts sought to acknowledge “the past, good and bad,” as it relates to the American South and included fraught imagery. However, the university’s museum [...]
UPDATE - July 24, 2024: The controversy over the historic artwork and non-renewal of the professor’s contract, resulted in a lawsuit and subsequent settlement between the art history professor and Hamline University. The terms of this settlement remain confidential. Additionally, the American Association of University Professors finds that the display of historical artwork was in fact consistent with scholarly [...]
New York - The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), which represents 59 education, publishing, religious and arts organizations, and Don’t Delete Art (DDA), a collaborative project between NCAC and several other organizations and artists, welcome Meta’s recent announcement of Instagram policy updates that promise to improve transparency around downranking for the platform’s professional account users. The announcement follows several [...]
How does the First Amendment protect the rights of students and teachers? This guide provides background on the legal and practical questions surrounding school censorship controversies.
The National Coalition Against Censorship is concerned about a new policy at Montclair Public Schools that threatens to chill teachers' ability to select instructional material that deals with race, ethnicity, religion or sexuality.
North Carolina lawsuit demands that public schools protect one religious viewpoint above others by banning Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X.
Government intervention into the content of higher education courses is very likely to suppress certain views, chill dissent, and restrict academic discourse.
The New Jersey legislature is considering an education bill that would redefine anti-Semitism so broadly as to infringe on protected speech.
The Jewish Community Center of San Francisco removed two works from its exhibition, La Frontera: Artists Respond to the U.S.-Mexico Border Crisis.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is considering legislation intended to combat anti-Semitism that poses a serious threat to the free speech rights of Floridians. NCAC and PEN America are gravely concerned.
The Aurora Public Library has removed a poem entitled "Hijab mean Jihad" from a display after community members complained.
The cancellation of a scheduled appearance by a Muslim guest speaker at a Connecticut public school is the latest disturbing example of suppressions of free speech in museums, on college campuses and now at middle schools in response to threats of violence.
The parents claim that the school taught solely Islamic religious practices in a World Culture and Geography curriculum, ignoring education in other world religions.
NCAC's letter underlines the mistake of conflating religious education with religious indoctrination.
Club activities will “include a healthy snack, literature lesson, creative learning activities, science lesson, puzzle solving, and art projects.” Students of all religious faiths are welcome to attend.
Mark Ryden: Fountain, 2003. Oil on Panel, 12x6.25 inches. ©Mark Ryden. In a replay of former New York Mayor Guiliani's attempt to grab attention by attacking "blasphemous" art, Ben Loyola, a member of the Virginia Beach Arts and Humanities Commission, is directing his ire against the work of LA-based painter Mark Ryden, featured in Turn the Page: The First Ten Years of [...]
Complaints about a lesson that included Arabic calligraphy caused an entire school district in Virginia to close down.
A conservative legal group's threat to sue a school over the planned reading of a book about a transgender child is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the First Amendment applies to public schools.
Parents in Georgia are outraged over lessons that teach the history of Islam. And the state is taking the complaints seriously, removing a program guide called "Respecting Beliefs."
An artwork draws protest from local clergy in Georgia. But the museum where it is displayed is standing firm.
Parents in Florida are upset that third graders will be reading books they say promote Islam.
A benefit event for the NCAC is abruptly called off after the theater hosting the show deemed some of the content offensive-- especially Neil LaBute's "Mohammed Gets A Boner."
The right-wing provocateur has the right to say what she wants. Does she think Arabs and Muslims have the same rights?
Local Tea Party activists fail in their efforts to remove world history textbooks they see as 'Islamic indoctrination.'
Who gets to decide how history is taught? ACT! for America, a grassroots political advocacy group fighting "Islamofascism," is attempting to exert control over World History in Charlotte County, FL. NCAC has responded.
Last December, a guidance counselor in rural Pennsylvania read a children’s book about a dress-wearing boy to a kindergarten class without advance notice to the parents, upsetting some residents in the district.
The audience coming to see John Adams' Death of Klinghoffer on Monday, October 20th, had to pass through a cordon of angry protesters crying "shame" and holding placards condemning the Metropolitan Opera of rather far fetched things like "taking terrorist $$$" or "glorifying terrorism." They must not have succeeded in shaming anyone as the house was full. The few hecklers in the [...]
The superintendent at Bordentown Regional School District [in New Jersey] made a public statement that “religious music should not be part of the elementary program[s]” and decided to ban religious Christmas music during winter concert performances at elementary schools within the district [...]
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 [...]
In response to the disturbing story of a woman who attacked a Gauguin at the National Gallery, Flavorwire Art Editor Marina Galpernia has helpfully compiled a photo set of great works modified for those with...delicate sensibilities: Thou shall not show your wiener to God, Adam. Even if Michelangelo’s God is emerging out of an embracing pile of amorous angels, he [...]
A couple weeks ago, Terry Jones finally gave into his burning desire to burn a Qur'an. Over the weekend, Afghans rioted over online video of the burning, resulting in the deaths of up to 20 people. General Petreus called the burning a "security threat" to the Afghan occupation, and Senators Harry Reid and Lindsay Graham have called for Congress to [...]
Button brought back from the March 2011 Culture Wars symposium with the Corcoran and Transformer DC.
Were you unable to make it to NCAC's "Policing the Sacred" panel on religion and freedom of expression at this year's CAA? Now is your chance to take in the discourse and debate with these full-length videos! The National Coalition Against Censorship has edited video of “Policing the Sacred: Art, Censorship, and the Politics of Faith,” a session held during [...]
Joy Garnett of NEWSgrist has posted her reflections on the NCAC's panel at CAA: 'Policing the Sacred' broached the most interesting age-old conundrum of art, religion and censorship. It asked that we ourselves examine the lines between hate speech, critique, parody, and appropriation of the sacred and its symbols by artists as well as by governments. Several factors were noted [...]
Policing The Sacred, organized by the National Coalition Against Censorship, looks at the volatile relationship between art, politics and religion.In recent decades the tensions between these have become intense, evident in the American culture wars of the 90s, the Danish cartoon uproar, and ongoing battles over artistic depictions of religious figures, including the recent removal of a David Wojnarowicz video from a show at the National Portrait Gallery. The panel, open to the public, takes place on Wednesday, February 9th, from 12:30-2 PM.
This is from an attendant at the protest organized by Transformer on Thursday, Dec. 2nd: The protest's silence was very effective. The rows standing mute along the entire width of north steps of the Portrait Gallery for about 25 minutes until the museum closed at 7:00 was eloquent and impactful in a way beyond the quantity of supporters or passion [...]
