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When artist Amy Sherald canceled it LGBTQ-inclusive of the Smithsonian National Portrait gallery gallery show “American sublime” last month, it was only the last in a series of censure episodes involving this year of LGBTQ art in the main American museums.
In February, Washington, DC’s Art Museum of the Americas Canceled “Nature’s Wild with Andil Gosine” A few weeks before the planned exhibition opening in March, without saying why. The group show was to include works inspired by the book by Gosine in 2021, “Nature’s Wild: Love, Sex and Law in the Caribbean”, which reflects on art, activism and homosexuality in the region.
The same month, the Arizona Museum of Contemporary Art made Untventh hour changes To a traveling exhibition of women, queer and trans artists, who had already been called “transfeminisms”, modifying the title of his show condensed to “there are other heavens”.
In April, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art has postponed an exhibition of a group of works by LGBTQ African artists titled “Here: pride and membership of African artWhich had been planned for an opening at the end of May to coincide with Worldpride. The DC Museum cited budgetary reasons to postpone the show until 2026, but the moment was difficult to miss the directives of the Trump administration to the Smithsonian to remove “an incomparable and preemptional and preemptional and preemptional and preemptional and preemptional and preemptional ideology Relocation of other cultural events in the world After the Trump administration, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts shooting.
“There is something in the combination of art and sexuality which remains the third rail in the world of the American museum,” art historian Jonathan D. Katz told NBC News. Katz was the main curator for “The first homosexuals: the birth of a new identity, 1869-1939”, “ The vast and successful historical study of the LGBTQ art which took place in early July at the Wrightwood 659 gallery in Chicago.
Katz traces the roots of modern censorship of queer art at the controversial exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe “The Perfect Moment”, which – with its provocative imagery, a large part of homoerotic – has become a cultural lightning rod at the top of the Reagan / Bush -Erle culture wars in 1989-1990.
“You might think that decades later, it would no longer be a living thread, but it always seems to be,” Katz said.
At the heart of the cancellation of Sherald’s show was his “Transming Liberty” painting, who presents a black trans woman pretending to be the statue of freedom. After learning that the National Portrait Gallery had “internal concerns” concerning painting and planned to replace it or supplement it with a video to provide “two sides” of its trans subject, Sherald fell and canceled all its show, which would have been the first solo exhibition of the museum by a contemporary black artist.
“Although no one is to be blamed, it is clear that institutional fear shaped by a broader climate of political hostility to Trans lives has played a role,” said Sherald, who has become famous when she painted the official portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama, in a statement after cancellation. “At a time when transgender is legislated against, silenced and in danger in our country, silence is not an option.”
After cancellation, a spokesperson for the Smithsonian Institution, who oversees the gallery, challenged Sherald’s claims And said that the institution wanted more time to better contextualize the painting, but that Sherald canceled before it could be done.
Katz declared that the withdrawal by Sherald from the exhibition “is that this moment”.
“I bowed against her,” he said. “She is ready to do it, she has the strength to do it, and I think it’s extraordinary.”
The National Portrait Gallery is one of the eight museums of the Smithsonian targeted as part of the first phase of a in -depth examination Announced Tuesday by the Trump administration. The exam will analyze all aspects of current and future exhibitions of the museum to ensure the alignment with the president’s march executive decree Call on “restoring the truth and mental health to American history”.
In June, through the city of “The First Homosexuals”, the Art Institute of Chicago opened a traveling exhibition of the homoerotic work of the French artist of the 19th century Gustave Cailbotte and undoubtedly homoerotic men, by changing the name of the spectacle of “Gustave Cillebotte: Peining Men” in “Gustave Caillebotte: paint your world.” The mural texts accompanying the works of Art Institute adopt a more general approach than during the previous incarnations of the exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Getty Center in Los Angeles, where frank discussions on gender and sexuality were included.
“This one was particularly exasperating, because not only did the show coincided with my program, but I wrote for the catalog of this exhibition precisely how we talk about the same sex desire in the work of Caillebotte,” said Katz.
Katz’s associate curator for “the first homosexuals”, Johnny Willis, added: “We are not asking them to say that Gustave Caillebotte was gay … We ask them to leave the opening of the possibility and to highlight the blur of these questions at the end of the 19th century.”
In a statement to NBC News, Art Institute in Chicago said that its title “Painting your world” illustrates more what people will see when they come to the exhibition, which “reflects the experience of life and daily life of Caillebotte, including its personal relationships with the men of his life, like his brother, his colleagues and his friends.” The Institute added that it is “a common practice” for the same exhibition to have different titles and wall labels when they are in different museums.
The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art – which was not included in the journal I of the Trump Administration – said in a statement on Tuesday that the postponement of its LGBTQ exhibition was due to private financing challenges and that the repulsive at the beginning of 2026 “offer to the Museum of additional time to increase fundraising for the exhibition.”
The Museum of Art of the Americas and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art immediately responded to requests for comments from NBC News concerning their exposed and modified exhibitions.
Willis said that “1% conservatism” 1% “strain today manages certain American museums today and that it contributes to an increase in censorship.
“Many of these museums are funded by private,” said Willis. “So I think that it is a question of trying to pacify a class of oligarchs who direct these museums overall, for whom the questions of explicit sexuality not censored are frankly anathema to their values.”
Fortunately for Katz and Willis – and the public of Chicago – the innovative exhibition Space Wrightwood 659, seven years old and undertook to present socially committed art, intensified to host “the first homosexuals” when practically all the other American museums refused it.
“A museum director said to me:” It is precisely the exhibition I would like to show, and therefore the one I cannot “,” said Katz.
After the success of the show, he said Katz, he was sure that several museums that refused him would ask him to host him afterwards. “I have never arrived,” he said. “Elogious criticism, the last two months have been exhausted, waiting lists of more than 100 people – I mean, all that a museum could wish, and yet no.”
Instead, the exhibition will move next to Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland, where it will open in the spring.
For the moment, Queer Art still finds a house in certain great American museums. “Kent Monkman: the story is painted by the winners” This weekend takes place at the Denver Art Museum; The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presents “Casa Susanna” Until January 25; And in Los Angeles, the Getty Center has a double functionality of queer emissions, “Lans queer: a story of photography” And Bill of $ 3: proof of queer lifeBoth exhibited until September 28.
“These exhibitions do what we always hope that an exhibition will make visibility to less known stories thanks to the demonstration of art to the public,” said Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty museum.
The conservative of the native arts of the Denver Art Museum, John P. Lukavic, said that the publishing of the exhibition has never been a consideration for the museum, having worked with Monkman, an artist with two queer spirits, for more than a dozen years. “The presentation of his work and the queer themes he explores is completely normal for us and our community,” said Lukavic.
Willis said that the museum officials underestimate the public’s appetite for queer’s theme.
“I don’t think many of those museum officials realize how a gold mine,” said Willis. “There is a hunger for these stories, these stories, these stories at the moment – without forgetting that it can strengthen a reputation. You can mark yourself as an institution that confirms bravery.”
