D.C gallery cancels exhibitions of Black and LGBTQ+ artists

An art gallery based in Washington D.C has cancelled two exhibitions featuring Black and LGBTQ+ artists just weeks after President Donald Trump’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.

The Art Museum of the Americas, which is run by the Organisation of American States (OAS), were expected to open the two exhibitions in March.

Cheryl D. Edwards and Andil Gosine, the curators of the two exhibits, receives phone calls from the museum’s director Adriana Ospina to inform them that the shows had been cancelled without further explanation.

Edwards’ show featured artwork by majority Black artists while Gosine’s show featured art from queer people of colour.

This comes after President Trump issued an executive order seeking to end “radical and wasteful government DEI programmes and preferencing” and therefore removing federal funding for all diversity and inclusion initiatives.

OAS is an international nonprofit that receives funding from over 30 countries, but the majority of it comes from the United States, so the museum is federally funded – if indirectly – and would therefore be forced to comply to maintain their cash reserves.

The National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian have already closed offices focusing on supporting racial minorities and diversifying their collections in light of the order, while the U.S Marine Band recently cancelled a collaboration with young musicians of colour.

Edwards told the Washington Post that the decision to cancel her show is directly related to the executive order, as her show is considered “DEI”.

Edwards’ show was titled ‘Before the Americas’ and would feature artworks by African-American, Afro-Latino, and Caribbean artists, aimed at tracking the influence of the transatlantic slave trade across generations of art.

She said that pushing out DEI within government projects was “silencing artistic voices”.

Gosine told the Guardian that the museum was pre-emptively capitulating to the order, before it was forced on them.

He said: “There’s a long history of the arts being attacked by conservative forces. What I’m disappointed about with the OAS is that this is not Trump’s action; this is anticipating. This for me is even scarier because it feels like we have this closeup view to how fascism unfolds.”

Gosine said his exhibition, titled ‘Nature’s Wild’, had taken years of work and the abrupt cancellation was extremely disappointing.

“I have not put more resources or time into any project. This was to be the feather in my cap because it was a very personal project. I grew up in Trinidad; the exhibition was around unpacking a life. The signature image for the exhibition was an image of me at three years [old],” Gosine explained.

The show was expected to feature sculpture, photography, video, acrylic paintings, oil paintings, collage, and a video installation by a dozen artists – many of them from the LGBTQ+ community – from Canada and the U.S.