Exhibition Shut Down Over Klan Imagery

January 24, 2023

Good morning. 🌤️ In today's news, a university gallery in Arkansas pulls an exhibition following student complaints about works that incorporate Ku Klux Klan motifs. It was primarily students of color who found the works racially insensitive, despite the best intentions of the White artist who made them. There might be a lesson there for those who pressured the National Gallery of Art to open its much-disputed Philip Guston retrospective without proper contextualization.

Also today, we check in on the Orlando Museum of Art, which is now under probation following its fake-Basquiats fiasco, and we speak with members of the Croatian art collective What, How & for Whom, who were pushed out of their roles as directors of Vienna's Kunsthalle for reasons still unclear.

You can also enjoy our reviews of Chicago's Drawing Biennial, Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg’s wacky exhibition on women's sexuality, David Drake’s pottery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and more.

— Hakim Bishara, Senior Editor

Art Collective Ousted From Viennese Museum Speaks Out

“We wanted Kunsthalle Wien to address multiple Viennas, not just the old established one,” said What, How & for Whom, whose contract at the museum was not renewed. | Avedis Hadjian

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LATEST NEWS

A photo of Dominique Simmons's "KLAN BRIDE" (2023) (image provided by Jace Bridges, crop Rhea Nayyar/Hyperallergic)

An exhibition at Arkansas Tech was taken down after several students of color deemed Dominique Simmons’s artworks “racially insensitive.”

Native leaders object to the sale of antique Lakota objects from the Battle of the Little Bighorn listed in the Guns of History Auction.

The American Alliance of Museums puts the Orlando Museum of Art on probation after its exhibition of disputed Basquiat paintings.

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FROM OUR CRITICS

Shining a Light on a Dark Chapter of American Pottery

Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina brings awareness of both Edgefield’s awesome artistry and poet-potter David Drake’s odds-defying life to a sizable audience. | Ekin Erkan

A Darkly Whimsical Take on Feminine Sexuality

Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg’s exhibition A Pancake Moon made me reflect on my experience of freezing my eggs. | Jennifer Remenchik

Nazafarin Lotfi Dreams Up a Borderless Future

The artist wedges a sharp critique, and in many ways, erodes the foundations on which borders are built. | Erin Joyce

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Down Иorth: North Atlantic Triennial and CHART suggest a model of regional exhibition-making that teases out threads of particularity to refute essentialism common in contemporary art. | Leah Triplett-Harrington

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