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August 5, 2025

ARTchivist's Notebook: We are not OK

In response to Amy Sherald's cancellation of her National Portrait Gallery show due to censorship, I reflect on how claims to being "unbiased" only support those in power.

Screenshot of the top part of the online article "Amy Sherald Cancels Her Smithsonian Show, Citing Censorship". The subhead reads: "The artist said that she made the decision after she said she learned that her painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty might be removed to avoid provoking President Trump." Below this is an image of Sherald's painting "Trans Forming Liberty," which depicts a Black, trans woman with hot pink, chin-length hair, wearing an ankle-length blue dress with a high slit that exposes a leg and large blue bows at the shoulders. She holds a bouquet of yellow flowers aloft in one hand, emulating the Statue of Liberty.
Screenshot from the New York Times, July 24, 2025.

I was disturbed by the news that painter Amy Sherald has cancelled her exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery because the institution entertained censorship demands from the Trump administration. The NPG refused to exhibit Sherald’s painting, “Trans Forming Liberty” as it has been presented in previous stops at SFMOMA and the Whitney Museum (where it is currently on view through Aug. 10). The image depicts a Black, trans woman holding aloft a bouquet of flowers as if it were the torch held by the Statue of Liberty. The NPG wanted to include a video of people reacting to the painting, which would have included anti-trans views. To her credit, Sherald just said “no.”

The NPG’s capitulation to the Trump administration’s efforts to erase and denigrate trans people (and BIPOC people, and women, and poor people, and people with disabilities, and basically anyone who isn’t WEBCCCHAM*) is an alarming development in our country’s slide into authoritarianism, in which any expression that doesn’t support or glorify the regime and its agendas is punished and suppressed. What’s more unsettling is that both the Smithsonian and the Trump administration are hiding behind claims of being unbiased and nonpartisan.

This claim to “neutrality” has also been a part of the archives and library world, where professionals are traditionally supposed to provide access to information and resources without judgment or preference. A lofty goal, but our profession has also been reckoning for a long time with its impossibility — no one is unbiased. All access to culture is facilitated or restricted by who you are, how you see the world, and whether that vision accords with that of the folks who police the gate. Claiming to be “nonpartisan” is a feint those in power use to consolidate that power.

Leaders at the NPG (I’m not even sure who they are now) may have thought proposing the video was simply presenting multiple sides of a debate; what they didn’t acknowledge is that an exhibition is already a declaration. It represents a position, a side, a particular point of view. In Sherald’s case, it’s an assertion that trans people, Black people, women are just as much a part — indeed might be at the center — of what it means to be American. Diluting or undermining that message in the name of pluralism is not only disingenuous, it’s a dangerous capitulation to corrupt autocrats.

This is not ok! We are not ok! And I don’t know what to do except keep talking about these things. I have a couple of projects in the works that involve Smithsonian-run entities and I’m not sure whether I should continue with them. Are you reevaluating your participation with government agencies in light of what’s happening? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

*WEBCCCHAM was coined by Hope Olson and enhanced by Marika Cifor. It stands for “white, ethnically European, bourgeois, cisgender, Christian, citizen, heterosexual, able-bodied man.”

Some happier news

Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community opened last week at the Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery of ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA. Organized by the Japanese American National Museum and curated by my husband, Oliver Wang, the exhibition looks at the long history of Japanese Americans’ engagement with Los Angeles car culture. It’s been a labor of love and an act of community archiving that took nine years to come to fruition, and it’s been lovely and amazing to see the community come out in support of the show and each other — over 700 people attended the opening receptions and at least two family reunions are happening around the show! If you’re in Southern California, I hope you’ll come visit!

Research in Progress: New Projects Committed to Recontextualizing Visual Objects is an eLaboratories webinar on August 12 at 3:00 PM ET, featuring presentations from Kale Serrato Doyen and Letícia Fernanda Carvalho Silva which respectively illuminate the Black built environment through the Teenie Harris Archive in Pittsburg, and the histories of enslaved women in Brazil through a painting by Tarsila do Amaral.

FOCAS (Faculty Organizing for Community Archives Support) is a collaboration of archivists, scholars, and MLIS students across nine institutions in the U.S. and Canada who are committed to supporting community-based archives. They are building a community archives map to highlight and connect the work of community archives across North America. This map will amplify the visibility of archives led by and for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, and other historically marginalized communities. FOCAS would love to include your archive if you have one! You can fill out their short form here: https://bit.ly/mappingFOCAS. Please try to submit a response by August 1st.

The 2025 Curationist Metadata Summit is coming up in September. This year’s topic is “Metadata Outside the Box,” and we’ll be discussing with distinguished panelists how metadata can subvert expectations and open up new relationships and ways of understanding cultural heritage. More info will be available soon!

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