Artists Sign a Pledge for Courage in Wake of Trump Letter to Smithsonian
As the White House moves to rewrite the nation’s museums in its own image, artists, and cultural workers are drawing battle lines. Save to My Ocula
Hundreds of artists and art organisations have signed a manifesto demanding arts organisations ‘maintain autonomy over programming choices, curatorial decisions, and artistic content’.
The statement, titled Collective Courage, was drafted by the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics (VLC) and sees 275 individuals and 150 institutions supporting a defense of cultural independence in response to the $27 million in NEA grant cuts and growing fears of institutions preemptively aligning with government interests.
Endorsers include Oregon Contemporary, Brooklyn’s feminist A.I.R. Gallery, and artists like Cindy Sherman.
The timing is pointed. On 21 August, the White House posted an unsigned article accusing Smithsonian museums of bowing to ‘anti-American ideology’ with a hit-list naming exhibitions, texts, and even individual works, from Rigoberto Gonzalez’s Refugees Crossing the Border Wall into South Texas (2020) to Amy Sherald’s Trans Forming Liberty (2024)—whose show at the National Portrait Gallery was pulled last month.
Signatories are united not just by outrage at outright censorship but by the subtler threat of self-censorship—cancelling shows or avoiding ‘provocative’ programming before the White House intervenes. The chilling effect may already be visible, with most signatories from independent spaces and artist associations rather than museums.
Founded in 1992 out of a New School lawsuit against the National Endowment for the Arts’ ‘decency clause’, the Vera List Center was born of an earlier culture-war clash over artistic freedom. —[O]
Main image: Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building (2018). CC BY 2.0. Photo: Plum Pine.
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