An exploratory case study in institutional racism as it has manifested
in the New York City art world" --Brooklyn Rail
In 2017, the Whitney Biennial included a painting by a white artist,
Dana Schutz, of the lynched body of a young black child, Emmett Till. In
1979, anger brewed over a show at New York's Artists Space entitled The
Nigger Drawings. In 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition
Harlem on My Mind did not include a single work by a black artist. In
all three cases, black artists and writers and their allies organized
vigorous responses using the only forum available to them: public
protest.
Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts reflects on these three
incidents in the long and troubled history of art and race in America.
It lays bare how the art world--no less than the country at large--has
persistently struggled with the politics of race, and the ways this
struggle has influenced how museums, curators and artists wrestle with
notions of free speech and the specter of censorship. Whitewalling
takes a critical and intimate look at these three "acts" in the history
of the American art scene and asks: when we speak of artistic freedom
and the freedom of speech, who, exactly, is free to speak?
Aruna D'Souza writes about modern and contemporary art, food and
culture; intersectional feminisms and other forms of politics; how
museums shape our views of each other and the world; and books. Her work
appears regularly in 4Columns.org, where she is a member of the
editorial advisory board, as well as in publications including the Wall
Street Journal, ARTnews, Garage, Bookforum, Momus and Art
Practical. D'Souza is the editor of the forthcoming Making it Modern:
A Linda Nochlin Reader.
