Earlier this year, we profiled a pair of folk singers who used a recent set at the Kennedy Center to protest the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies. That would’ve been a noteworthy moment under any circumstances, but it was particularly remarkable because President Donald Trump seized control of programming at the Kennedy Center earlier this year, with the explicit goal of expunging art he refers to as “woke” from the center’s programming.
Concerns about creative censorship have rippled out all over the country under Trump, including right here in the Valley.
Robrt Pela covered the trend recently for Phoenix Magazine, and he joins The Show.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: So, Robrt, let's start by talking about some of these local examples. In your piece, you profiled the former chief curator of the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum. Tell us why she's the former curator.
ROBRT PELA: Well, so, Tiffany Fairall, I can't say enough about Tiffany Fairall because she's that rare exception. She's somebody who stood up to censorship. So she's the former curator because they tied a hand to her tail. She was asked to remove art from some of the shows that she curated.
She was the chief curator there, as she said. And, she said, no, that is not my job. My job is not to censor art. My job is to bring art to the public. I'm the curator.
DINGMAN: And what was their reaction to that?
PELA: Well, after she was gone, their reaction was exactly what you would anticipate, which is in one case they blamed her staff. They canceled a show, which I think they later put back on the schedule.
And they issued a statement. I think this was maybe two years ago saying, yeah, we canceled that show. We postponed that show because the staff was not ready. Well, the staff was ready.
DINGMAN: Right.
PELA: There was work in the show that city managers, because this is a city-run museum, didn't like the commentary behind the pieces that were being shown.
DINGMAN: OK. Well, there was a similar situation recently at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art with a touring exhibition that was originally called Trans Feminisms, I believe.
PELA: Yeah.
DINGMAN: But it did not open under that title.
PELA: No, no it didn't. And you know, the interesting thing about this is that it took place in plain sight. This was censorship that you could see and track if you were, as we are, if you were a journalist who was receiving catalog copy and press releases.
We got a press release, I don't know, late last year, that said, hey, we're, we're bringing that Trans Feminisms show from London, and it's going to be … next year. Yay!
And then a few months later, it turns up in the catalog as something called something else. And the show was very different. The new title of the show was “There Are Other Skies.” Please note that this does not have that nasty prefix of trans.
DINGMAN: Right. Right.
PELA: And, you know, the show went from being about, so in London it was about women, queer and trans people. But in Scottsdale, the same show was suddenly about urgent, pressing and ongoing topics faced by female-identifying people worldwide.
So it's the same show, but it's being presented differently. It's the same show. But they took work out of the show.
DINGMAN: Right, that kind of parsing in the language that you were just referring to and in the Mesa example, the blaming it on the staff.
This is one of the things you point out in the piece, is that the administrators at these institutions would, of course, insist that they're against censorship. What is their explanation for making these changes?
PELA: Their explanation is, a lot of corporate speak and a lot of denial. No, no, no, no, you got it wrong. That's not what I mean. I report this in the piece that they're doing their jobs, which is to say, yeah, no, we didn't do that. We don't agree with censorship. It's wrong and bad and awful.
And then you say, yeah, but look, there's four pieces missing from the show, and you, you retitled it, and the curators of the exhibition are saying to me and to everyone else, our show was censored.
DINGMAN: Right. Well, and of course, as you pointed out, these are shows where in the case of Trans Feminisms or that the exhibition formerly known as Trans Feminisms, a release went out indicating that there was a different title. And so it's like it's a known thing. It's a fair question to ask why the title would be changed.
PELA: Right. And I did ask the director of SMoCA and he said, you know, the London reviews of this exhibition suggested that maybe the title was more controversial than it needed to be.
So this is to answer your earlier question, this is the kind of explanation that one gets when you hold their feet to the fire. When you say to the director of a museum, why did you fire your chief curator or why did you take work out of a show? Or why did you try to get her to take work out of a show? They're not going to say, oh, well, because we were afraid of losing funding. No one's going to do that.
DINGMAN: Well, we have just about a minute left here, Robrt. And I'm curious, you know, in addition to writing about this and in addition to being an artist yourself, you have also worked as a curator.
You have had these sorts of conversations with the folks who, who, are in the administrative side of these institutions. What have those experiences suggested to you about why this happens?
PELA: I think sometimes it comes down to being a bad match. It's just bad practice. Lousy management. You know, you want somebody you want to hire someone to run your museum who can keep an eye on the bottom line, but you don't want that person messing with the exhibition itself, deciding what goes on. Because they're afraid of losing the funding. That will keep the bottom line where it needs to be.
My experience was that I was the guest curator at the Herberger Arts Center for a year, and I did what curators do, which is at the beginning of the year, beginning of the season, I submitted my four shows to this woman who ran the gallery and who, frankly, should not have been running the gallery because she had no insight into art.
And she did not look at my submissions until right before the fourth show opened, at which point she said, yeah, this photograph by the artist Michael Thomas Ford is not appropriate. So, you need to take that one out. And I said, well, I'm not going to do that. And she canceled the show.
DINGMAN: Well, we'll have to leave it there. But, this is obviously an ongoing situation.
PELA: It is, yeah.
