Amy Sherald says the Smithsonian suggested removing a painting of a transgender woman as the Statue of Liberty from her upcoming show at the National Portrait Gallery “to avoid provoking President Trump.” Sherald: “I cannot in good conscience comply with a culture of censorship”
— Nicole Chung (@nicolechung.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Now, more than ever, would be a good time to visit the Whitney Museum in NYC… [Gift link]
… “American Sublime,” set to arrive at the museum in September, is a much heralded exhibition of works by Ms. Sherald and would have been the first by a Black contemporary artist at the Portrait Gallery. She is particularly known for her sensitive, serene portraits, which led to her selection by Ms. Obama. Some of her work, such as her transgender Statue of Liberty, has also been fueled by social concerns.
“I entered into this collaboration in good faith, believing that the institution shared a commitment to presenting work that reflects the full, complex truth of American life,” the artist said in a letter sent on Wednesday to Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian, which runs the Portrait Gallery. “Unfortunately, it has become clear that the conditions no longer support the integrity of the work as conceived.’’…
A Smithsonian spokesman released a statement that suggested Ms. Sherald had misunderstood Mr. Bunch’s proposal. “The video was to accompany the painting as a way to contextualize the piece,” the statement said. “It was not to replace Amy Sherald’s painting. “
In a second statement, the institution said: “While we understand Amy’s decision to withdraw her show from the National Portrait Gallery, we are disappointed that Smithsonian audiences will not have an opportunity to experience ‘American Sublime.’…
The Smithsonian has been under scrutiny by President Trump who in March issued an executive order that asserted that the country had “witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our nation’s history” by the institution. He argued that the Smithsonian had “in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.”
A White House official said that the “removal of this exhibit is a principled and necessary step” toward restoring what it sees as the proper role of institutions like the Smithsonian.
“The ‘Trans Forming Liberty’ painting, which sought to reinterpret one of our nation’s most sacred symbols through a divisive and ideological lens, fundamentally strayed from the mission and spirit of our national museums,” Lindsey Halligan, a special assistant to the president who has been working on his efforts to transform the Smithsonian, said in a statement. “The Statue of Liberty is not an abstract canvas for political expression — it is a revered and solemn symbol of freedom, inspiration, and national unity that defines the American spirit.”…
In her letter, Ms. Sherald said: “Portraiture has always been my way of asserting presence — of creating visibility where there has too often been erasure.” She continued. “When that visibility is compromised, even subtly, it alters not only the artwork, but the message it carries. I cannot consent to that.”…
Ms. Sherald has been open about her activism. One of her works is a portrait of Breonna Taylor, whose death helped galvanize national protests against police violence. The painting is now jointly owned by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington and by the Speed Museum in Louisville, Ky.
Another work, “For Love, and For Country,” features two men embracing in the posture of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photo of a sailor kissing a female nurse on V-J Day in Times Square. Ms. Sherald has described the image as a contribution to conversations around the military and sexuality.
Both are in the show at the Whitney that had been scheduled to travel to the Smithsonian…
When challenged over a portrait of a transgender Statue of Liberty by the National Portrait Gallery, artist Amy Sherald declared that “silence is not an option.”
— The Advocate (@advocate.com) July 24, 2025 at 5:15 PM
… Sherald told the Times that Bunch suggested that instead of having the painting, there should be a video of people discussing transgender lives, and this ultimately led her to cancel the show. “The video would have opened up for debate the value of trans visibility, and I was opposed to that being a part of the ‘American Sublime’ narrative,” she said in her statement.
Her work is known for its political stance, which is why the former First Lady chose her, and she made this clear in her statement, explaining why she felt it was the right decision to withdraw her show from the National Portrait Gallery.
“I cannot in good conscience comply with a culture of censorship, especially when it targets vulnerable communities,” Sherald wrote. “At a time when transgender people are being legislated against, silenced, and endangered across our nation,” she added, “silence is not an option.”
This is not the first time the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery has been criticized for queer erasure. A retrospective of the works of Felix González-Torres, which closed this month, came under fire for obfuscating the late artist’s queer identity and connection to the AIDS crisis, particularly in the portrait of his partner Ross Laycock, “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)…
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Artist Amy Sherald cancels her Smithsonian show over censorship concerns Sherald said she backed out amid discussions of removing a painting that shows a transgender woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty.
www.nbcnews.com/nbc-…
#transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA— Transgender World (@transgenderreport.com) July 25, 2025 at 10:14 AM
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“Amy Sherald is one of the most important portraitists today, and her work celebrates and illuminates our shared humanity. SFMOMA stands by Amy’s artistic vision and respects her decision regarding the presentation of her mid-career survey, American Sublime.”
www.sfchronicle.com/entertainmen…— Steve Rhodes (@steverhodes.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 4:42 PM
… “A painting of a transgender woman is a political painting,” Sherald told the Chronicle in November. “Being Black is political because I think queerness and blackness can be the same where if a whole bunch of Black people start showing up to a space or queer people,” it becomes a Black or queer space, Sherald finished. ..
“I entered into this collaboration in good faith, believing that the institution shared a commitment to presenting work that reflects the full, complex truth of American life. Unfortunately, it has become clear that the conditions no longer support the integrity of the work as conceived.’’
Sherald, 51, is best known for her 2018 official portrait of first lady Michelle Obama “Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama” and the 2020 painting “Breonna Taylor,” a painting of the 26-year-old emergency medical technician who was fatally shot by police in Louisville after officers forced their way into her home that was commissioned as a cover for Vanity Fair magazine.
Born in Columbus, Ga., Sherald lived and worked in Baltimore for much of her career, winning the National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition in 2016 for her 2014 painting “Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance).” “American Sublime” features nearly 50 paintings and works on paper by Sherald from 2007 to the present…
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Learn more about Amy Sherald and #BlackArt
nmwa.org/art/artists/…— Anne 💙🩷🤍 [נעמי יעל] (@tranniehathaway.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 4:15 PM
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Amy Sherald, “All American,” 2017
— Michael Lobel (@mlobelart.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 1:39 PM
kindness
It isn’t a shock that Trump2.0 spokespeople try to put the blame on the artist rather than accepting responsibility here. Of course, not accepting responsibility is a hallmark of Trump2.0.
No One of Consequence
What used to be expected, or at least greatly anticipated, is now so rare as to be treated as an example of extreme behaviour:
Integrity.
Thank you Ms. Sherald for your most timely example.
So that it shall not perish from this country just yet, despite the tastes of the day.
-NOoC
Suzanne
Good for Sherald. That’s a big sacrifice. It’s a hit to her career and her income.
Maybe one of our other art institutions, like MoMA or the Whitney, can host the show.
Melancholy Jaques
Query. Has the Smithsonian ever advised any other artists to make changes to avoid provoking any other presidents?
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Suzanne: The fact that those less able to afford the sacrifice are the ones most often called upon to make such sacrifices are why the rates of the top tier of income and estate taxes need radical adjustment upwards.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Melancholy Jaques: how many prior Presidents were so prickly that the Smithsonian felt compelled to humor them? The only one that comes to mind is Jackson, and he predates the Institution by a dwcade.
Elizabelle
@Suzanne: I hope the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond invites Amy Sherald. Once we elect Governor Abigail Spanberger, about 100 days from now.
Host it somewhere close to DC. RVA is a two hour drive. Alternatively, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Make it easy for DC residents and visitors to get there. And support art, free speech and spend money.
Elizabelle
VMFA is a treasure, and very inclusive. Free to visit, although the blockbuster traveling exhibits are paid tickets. We have an excellent Frida Kahlo show (with incredibly good gift shop wares) now, through early September.
We have mummies and Asian art and Renaissance art and a huge collection of Faberge eggs and other artworks. Love the VMFA. Gonna call them now to request they invite Ms. Sherald.
Steve LaBonne
Thank you, Ms. Sherald. We are all hungry and thirsty for examples of integrity. When this time of insanity is over we are not going to forget who displayed it and who didn’t.
Suzanne
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq): Sherald is also an organ transplant survivor, IIRC, and I think I read that she had to put much of her painting career on hold to care for her aging parents. So she spent much of her life in an economically precarious position, even moreso than most artists….. who are not, as a rule, doing great.
So, I want to support her. If that show comes somewhere within driving distance, I will make a point to attend. I actually got to see the Obama portraits in person at the deYoung (along with a show by Alice Neel, also fantastic), and I will note that Sherald’s work is lovelier in person than on the screen.
Elizabelle
I wonder if the Whitney might hold the show over. It is no longer traveling to DC, and talk about packing visitors in as a protest vote. Eff
Trumpand support art and free speech.StringOnAStick
I wonder if the DEI crusade against the Smithsonian has something to do with the current director of the Smithsonian being black, or that recent years have seen many interesting articles in the magazine about racial issues or history of events where race is a huge part of the story. Nah, that can’t be it…
TinRoofRusted
@Suzanne: the show is at the Whitney through August 10. I went yesterday and it is magnificent! I really cannot recommend it enough if anyone can make it to NYC before it closes. Also, I learned she is from Columbus GA. So hopefully the High Museum of Art will take it on.
Suzanne
@Elizabelle: Honestly, with this kind of attention….. maybe it can travel. Lots of shows do.
TinRoofRusted
@Elizabelle: I heard more than a few folks mention that they came to NYC now because of the DC cancellation.
Suzanne
@TinRoofRusted: Ooohhhhh. I’m not sure I can make it to NYC that soon! If it can hit the Art Institute of Chicago or the Walker, though, I will be near there multiple times this year.
Chetan Murthy
Ms. Sherald is doing a great thing here. There’s a term, “Gleichshaltung” from the OG Nazis. It means “coordination” (or “synchronization”) and denoted the practice whereby the Nazis forced basically all civil society organizations to bend to their will. This was aimed at destroying any ability for civilians to meet and discuss their discontent with the regime: to make resistance impossible to even -start-.
Ms. Sherald is demonstrating that she won’t be party to that.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Isn’t it already in the Whitney?
bbleh
How long do we suppose until the Trump people openly adopt the language of the Nazi and Soviet regimes concerning “decadent” art?
And I’m not convinced they won’t have enough time to expand their growing network of concentration camps / gulags to classes of people deemed undesirable other than actual or possible immigrants.
Craig
@Elizabelle: great museum. My mum’s been a VMFA member for decades. I always go by for the Faberge eggs, and theirs always something cool. Years ago there was a collection of extremely early Elvis photos from a tour to NYC to record Hound Dog(? I think). It was cool. Killer Man Ray show. Exceptional museum for sure. Fuck The Daughters of the Confederacy next door though.
gene108
The Statue of Liberty was dedicated to welcoming immigrants into this country.
jonas
Trump and MAGA shit all over the Statue of Liberty every day as a symbol of hope and freedom to new immigrants and the world’s oppressed. I’m surprised they haven’t ordered Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” removed entirely (though I assume that’s one of the “to do” Post-It notes on Stephen Miller’s desk…).
TinRoofRusted
Need to get back to work (sigh). But if you go to the website Art21.org and search for her you will find a very informative video about her and her work. They were showing it at the Whitney. Sorry but I do not know how to embed links.
hells littlest angel
The nerve. The absolute fucking nerve.
artem1s
Liberty personified does not belong to the US. There is a long history of artists using it in their work. Besides, the current occupant of the oval office is the one who has fundamentally strayed from the ideology that is portrayed in Bartholdi’s design.
jonas
@Chetan Murthy: Indeed, “Gleichschaltung” should be getting more play these days because it’s *exactly* what Trump is doing to cultural institutions (e.g. Kennedy Center) to universities (Columbia) and other private entities (Big Law, Paramount, etc.) that were previously not supine tools of authoritarian government policies.
Baud
TIL Lady Liberty is cis.
jonas
@artem1s: What’s next, banning Jimmy Hendrix’s rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner”?
I bet if someone suggested to Trump he take stuff like Sherald’s painting and put it in a special exhibit called “Degenerate Art”, he’d totally jump at it.
Elizabelle
@Craig: Yeah, the DoC weasel ladies would not let the crowd stand on their lawn when Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War bronze statue was unveiled a few years ago. It’s based on the removed JEB Stuart monument, but with a young contemporary Black man in the saddle.
Elizabelle
@TinRoofRusted: No doubt! Hope the Whitney can hold it over, and then the Sherald show can do a nationwide victory tour.
gene108
@jonas:
I too am surprised this hasn’t been done.
Citizen_X
Boy, Lindsey Halligan, starting a new career as a fascist art critic. The Statue of Liberty is a “solemn symbol of freedom,” but not if you do freedom the wrong way. Meanwhile, I can see people dressed as the SoL advertising tax prep, but don’t you dare use it as “an abstract canvas for political expression.”
Craig
@Elizabelle: I love that The Boulevard is now Arthur Ashe Boulevard right in front of the DOC building. In the 80s when my buddy lived down the street we’d get drunk and walk over and pee on their door.
Steve LaBonne
@Citizen_X: These Nazis need to keep the word “freedom” out of their filthy mouths. And away from fascist invocations of “national unity”.
Mike in Pasadena
Yay, Amy!
mrmoshpotato
@Melancholy Jaques:
Doubtful. There’s only been one that’s a transphobic fascist manbaby who humps Putin’s leg.
wenchacha
@Suzanne: I love Alice Neel, so much. Glad you got to see her!
I haven’t had a chance to see many of her painting in person, yet.
wenchacha
So reminiscent of Mayor Rudy Giuliani going after artist Chris Ofili’s painting because it contained elephant dung and it was of the Holy Mother.
Suzanne
@wenchacha: Alice Neel is just so awesome. One of the best portraitists in history. She might be in my top 10.
Victor Matheson
So, I was literally at the Whitney last Thursday and went to the show the day before this whole thing blew up. It’s an excellent exhibition that you would have to be the most small-minded, anti-American, bigoted freak to find offensive in any way.
Look, I can understand why Mapplethorpe’s more explicit photos or Serrano’s Piss Christ could be found obscene or insulting, and curators need to decide whether the artistic value of the work actually exists and exceeds any potential criticism.
This is not that. At all. These are people who are worried about anything more radical than a piece of Wonder bread. Hard to know what the right thing to do here is as this does remove an important show from the Smithsonian, a move that Trump’s fascists would love. And I don’t think replacing the show with something Trump would like more, such as a Thomas Kinkade retrospective, is good for art or the Smithsonian. But I can’t fault Sherald here at all.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@jonas: I have a “friend” with a younger, idiot maga brother. He has both a Statue of Liberty and a Constitution tattoo.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Well, Santa Claus is white, so…
Redshift
@StringOnAStick:
No doubt. (Lonnie Bunch is awesome, btw.)
I don’t know if it’s been discussed much here, but the Trumpsters are going after George Mason University as the next VA target after they forced out the president of UVA, and it’s really obvious the reason is that the university president is Black.
There are reports from the profs union (AAUP), who have locked horns with the president in the past and are not generally cheerleaders for him, that meetings of the Youngkin-appointed university board have become ritual humiliation sessions, where President Washington is basically asked to prove he’s qualified, when he has a PhD in education and the university has been extremely successful by all relevant metrics during his tenure. It’s appalling.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot: So is Jesus.
@Redshift:
Hopefully he can hold on a few more months.
mrmoshpotato
@Professor Bigfoot:
@Baud: Go away, Megyn! :)
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Yes, that famously blonde, blue-eyed, first century Jew… XD
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Thomas Kinkade AI art retrospective. That way the Trump foundation can rip off Kinkade first by training the AI on his catalogue.
Cheryl from Maryland
Good for Ms. Shepard, and really Lonnie Bunch. ..
Alas, the Smithsonian has censored exhibitions in the past, although this is a first because of a President. Members of Congress have pressured the Smithsonian since I started working there in 1988 (the museum where I worked in 88 was closed the day Bush I had an inauguration party there. I don’t know what they thought we were going to do). Before Ms. Sherard’s exhibition, the most prominent were the Enola Gay exhibition in 1995 (exhibition script and curators were fired as the exhibition focused on Hiroshima/Nagasaki as the beginning of the nuclear world wide threat rather than the triumphant end of WWII) and the Hide/Seek exhibition in 2010, where a piece of video art made by an artist dying of AIDS was pulled by the Secretary due to shrieking complaints from the Catholic League (the artist was Catholic and gay; imagery in the piece had flames and ants crawling over a crucifix) and two GOP Congressman – Beahner and Cantor. For a few years after the Enola Gay exhibition, two exhibitions I was personally involved with were required by the Secretary to get high level approval and even Congressional sign off. One was Whispered Silences, photographs of the remains of the US Japanese-American interments camps (was almost cancelled until sanity prevailed). The other was a photography show of nature photographs of the Tongass rainforest in Alaska. Alaska’s Congressman, Don Young, hated the photographer who was against logging in the Tongass. Young’s office held the script until three days before the exhibit opened (we could not wait to produce the exhibition until we heard from them as we had a signed contract with an outside museum). There were 4 changes – all minor – like change “the major tree” to “a major tree”. Of course, we had to redo three panels completely and swallow the costs.
Steve LaBonne
@Redshift: Many well-meaning white people thought racism was declining when in reality it merely had temporarily been forced to be a bit more discreet. Prof. Bigfoot is completely entitled to laugh at our naivete.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Professor Bigfoot: Krampus, who is more of Trump’s type, on the other hand.
Baud
George Mason
bsky.app/profile/mbkplus.bsky.social/post/3lv2eglawsk2c
Redshift
As a very white person, I am so sick of this white(/straight/cis/male) supremacist bullshit that the only way not to be discriminatory and “divisive” is to pretend bigotry and prejudice already doesn’t exist, and we’re all just people. I’m not even going to dignify their snowflake performance “this makes people feel bad” with an outraged response, because I’m absolutely sure that’s all bullshit too, and everyone involved in this knows the real goal is just driving any other identities or viewpoints out of public life.
Steve LaBonne
@Redshift: “I have nothing against those people, they just need to stay in their place.”
Martin
@Baud: Yep, I’m good friends with the President of George Mason, and have a little better understanding of it now. The WH is going to going to cross a lot of lines until they get him out. This is less like the Harvard thing and more like the New School thing and I’ll leave it at that.
Redshift
@Baud:
I hope so, too. It may be that I’m just not hooked into UVA news, but I feel like they haven’t managed to spring this by surprise as much, so there’s been a lot more public defense — in addition to campus groups and unions, our senators and local congresspeople, local officials, and the business community have all joined the outcry.
It’s hard, though, because it’s a state school and Youngkin is a complete Trump bootlicker who still thinks he has a shot at becoming president, and has spent his entire term attacking Northern Virginia to endear him to the wingnut base.
prostratedragon
@StringOnAStick: This isn’t a move I’d expect of Bunch, so the pressure must be life-threatening to the institution. He might not exactly be sorry about the negative attention, since some of it could spill over onto the why of it.
Redshift
@Martin:
I still can’t believe Youngkin said on the campaign trail he saw DeSantis as a model and still got elected. But I guess that only meant something to us politics nerds who were always going to vote Dem.
ruckus
I got over being horrified that people are terrified or hateful of gay humans. It’s not an illness, say like measles, that is transmitted by any means. It is a segment of humanity. One of my siblings was homosexual and it made zero difference about her relationships other than her partners were the same gender. I really liked one of them, who died of sickle cell, but all of them I met over the decades were fine human beings. I met a couple sets of parents as well and very much enjoyed their company. IOW being gay is in no way a negative concept, one can still be a good human – or not, your sexuality isn’t the negative, it’s your personality, who you are, how you treat or want to treat others that truly defines you. It’s how there are good/great humans and pure shit walking. It’s like skin color, it doesn’t determine if you are a good or shitty human, that’s up to your personality and who and what you want to act like. And remember that we all have the exact same chemicals in our bodies, it’s just the amount of one of them that determines our skin color.
trollhattan
Shorter Donny: “Pray for me.”
A cubemate, devout Muslim, keeps a prayer rug in his cube. I’m certain that’s what Trump has in mind.
Redshift
@prostratedragon:
They’ve already had to suffer things like artifacts including the Greensboro lunch counter being returned to donors (and I’ll bet it was a fight to keep them from just being thrown in the trash.) The Smithsonian is in a bad way.
Martin
@Redshift: Yeah, the average voter doesn’t engage with something like that, IMO.
Baud
@Redshift:
So I thought that was clarified by the donor that it was actually due to be returned.
Baud
Not that I trust this but I like the message.
Redshift
@Baud: I’ll have to look into it. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the only one, and it was connected to Vance (who as VP is on the Board of Regents), but I should double-check.
prostratedragon
@Redshift:
Also, the history conveyed by @Cheryl from Maryland above says to me that the pressure can be transmitted by more than just the President, anti-art as is the one we have here.
ETA, ths could have been a way to keep the works safe.
Booger
@Redshift: That is so effing weird. I am loathe to make my association with George Mason University known; I am embarrassed GMU is home to /famous for /notorious for the Koch-funded Mercatus institute, the ASSOL (Scalia School of Law) and is a hotbed of Federalist Society nutjobs. Schools don’t get any more right-wing than that.
Yet here we are.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Citizen_X:
@Steve LaBonne:
”You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Prometheus Shrugged
@Victor Matheson: Maybe she could suggest substituting a couple of Hunter Biden’s paintings for the trans statue of liberty.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Let it be noted Monday before CoB, Eric was given the task of putting the hit on Joe Rogan.
Two weeks later Eric presents dad with a tub of Rogaine. “Did it, dad!”
sab
@Baud: Jesus being white doesn’t count because he was Middle Eastern and Jewish.
Princess
I admitted Sherald s courage and integrity for backing out of what would be a huge exhibition for her. If only more of our leaders had half as much. She’s a tremendous artist too.
Professor Bigfoot
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: 1774: Doctor Johnson writes, “How is it we hear the loudest yelps of liberty from the drivers of negroes(slaves)?”
Princess
@Princess: gah “admire”
Another Scott
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Relatedly, … Judd Legum at Popular.info:
No lie told – rikyrah
Something something language was invented to hide men’s thoughts.
That’s what we’re up against. If they control the default language of politics and economics and …, then they control how people think about them.
It’s a tough problem.
(via @volts.wtf)
Best wishes,
Scott.
sab
@Prometheus Shrugged: I kind of like Hunter’s paintings. But they aren’t hers.
Shana
I would love for the Phillips Collection in DC to snap up this show.
Steve LaBonne
@Another Scott: I think the everyday lived reality of enshittified capitalism is rapidly catching up with this drivel. Voters in NYC may be the advance guard in this respect.
dnfree
@Steve LaBonne: I just finished reading the new biography of Martin Luther King Jr. by Jonathan Eig. As someone who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, I remember how inspirational and hard-working he was for the cause. The end of the book, which to a certain extent indicates that the whole civil rights movement was somewhat struggling at that point, broke my heart. I didn’t recognize that at the time, or maybe for another couple of decades, and then it became evident that progress had slowed dramatically. Fast forward to now….
Steve LaBonne
@dnfree: Or fast reverse as the case may be.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott: That “@volts.wtf” link goes to a -blistering- critique, too! Like this skeet: bsky.app/profile/volts.wtf/post/3lv2ddvzais2p
Thank you for this!
Miki
@Craig: Perhaps the only redeeming value of having a penis ….
Miki
@Victor Matheson: “I don’t think replacing the show with something Trump would like more, such as a Thomas Kinkade retrospective, is good for art or the Smithsonian …”
or anyone, TBH.
u
@kindness: Yup. Actually a hallmark of Trump himself since he was a pampered rich boy 70 years ago.
Citizen Alan
@Victor Matheson: Mapplethorpe’s not my thing, but I think Piss Christ is a haunting and powerful work. And I also think that 90% of the people who are “offended” by it have never actually looked at it.
Miki
@Booger: “[T]he the ASSOL ([Antonin] Scalia School of Law”).
Hadn’t heard of that. Works perfectly.
Wilson Heath
Letting a fascist pedophile dictate the bounds of morally appropriate art is an interesting ethos.
trollhattan
@Citizen Alan: I didn’t really know Mapplethorps’s work beyond photo mag spreads. Then I read Patti Smith’s Just Kids and learned about the human behind the art.
Horses LP cover is done by Robert.
Citizen Alan
@Chetan Murthy:
Wasn’t Ruy Teixeira the guy who wrote The Coming Democratic Majority, a stupidly triumphalist book that everyone at Kos was talking giddily about 20 years ago because none of them could conceive of the GOP embrace outright fascism to stay in power?
Madeleine
I saw the show about ten days ago. I’d seen a smaller show several years ago at a gallery, I think, and it left a strong impression, so I could not miss this. It is magnificent!
Worth effort to find a way to see it.
No One You Know
@bbleh: I think the phrase is “degenerate art.”
Elizabelle
@Shana: Yes! The Phillips would be great! Just enjoyed the Alfonse Mucha show there recently.
Kayla Rudbek
@Booger: Ave Maria, Steubenville, Liberty University, and Bob Jones are even worse (and University of Chicago has the infamous economics department, Notre Dame’s law school also is shilling for the right wing, Dartmouth produced D’Souza, most of the rest of the Seditious Six went to Harvard or Yale Law School if I recall correctly, and I think one of the women law professors at Yale was very skeevy about how she wanted her female law students to present themselves during internships/summer employment)
Anne Laurie
You’re probably thinking of Amy Chua, Tiger Mom, who not only ‘tutored’ her female students on how to present themselves, but apparently introduced them to her husband, who sexually harassed them (valuable life experience internship, I guess).
But Chua’s real crime was mentoring JD Vance — she famously encouraged him to write Hillbilly Elegy — and introducing him to all the right (Reicht) people at think tanks who would propel him to his current position.