CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Museum of Contemporary Art apologized for a second time publicly on Sunday for canceling an exhibition of drawings by a prominent black artist from New York that graphically depict police killings of unarmed black men.
The new apology, posted on the museum’s website, came in response to a public message issued Saturday by the artist, Shaun Leonardo of Brooklyn, N.Y., in which he accused the museum of censoring his work.
Leonardo said that after what he called a “grave mishandling of communication regarding the exhibition, institutional white fragility led to an act of censorship.”
The controversy over the show’s cancellation, comes at a time when the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who was being restrained by a white policeman in Minneapolis, has stirred protests in hundreds of cities in the U.S. and around the world.
MOCA Cleveland originally apologized in March for canceling Leonardo’s exhibition after encountering a "troubling community response that suggested at this time we were not prepared to engage with the lived experiences of pain and trauma that the work evokes.”
The announcement of the show’s cancellation coincided with the statewide orders shutting down museums and other institutions in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Jill Snyder, director of MOCA Cleveland since 1996, said Monday that the cancellation of Leonardo’s exhibition was the first such incident in her career. She said she regretted the decision, that it emerged from a flawed process, and that the institution is trying to learn from its mistakes.
She said the cancellation was based on critiques from several community activists whom she declined to name. She said the activists persuaded the institution that showing Leonardo’s drawings would “retraumatize” members of “an already traumatized community who live every day with the aftermath of police violence.’’
Snyder said the museum made an error in not seeking more diverse views in Cleveland’s black community about how it could have proceeded with the show.
“Through exchanges with trusted and valued community members, we’ve had tough conversations with feedback that the black community is not a monolith,’’ Snyder said.
“There were voices of those who believe that presenting the work, as uncomfortable as it would have been for the Cleveland community, would have been a brave and productive step.’’
MOCA Cleveland also failed to engage Leonardo in a discussion about how best to present his challenging work, Snyder said.
Snyder said that MOCA Cleveland has made extensive efforts to diversify its audience and staff, and is seeing increased attendance by African-Americans for family programs and other events including the "For Freedoms'' public forums co-organized by artist Hank Willis Thomas, who is black, and Eric Gottesman, who is white.
Of 34 members on the museum’s board of trustees, four are black, two are Asian and one is a native of Israel, Snyder said. Out of 28 professional staff members, four are black. One is a curatorial fellow, another is the museum’s accountant, and two are security officers.
The Leonardo exhibition, entitled, “The Breath of Empty Space,’’ opened originally at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in January.
Louis Block, an art critic for The Brooklyn Rail, said that in Leonardo’s drawings, based on new photographs and other sources, the artist “builds a system that questions a singular image’s capacity for truth-telling.”
Snyder said MOCA is now scheduled to reopen July 9, and will extend exhibitions on view in March when it closed, including a retrospective of works by the late Margaret Kilgallen.
Leonardo did not respond late Monday to a request for comment on his Instagram account.
In a 2017 YouTube video about his work, Leonardo explained why he focuses on graphic images of black people being killed by police.
“When thinking about these tragedies, it’s very human to shut down and to be desensitized by these widely disseminated images of human death. But for some of us, we continue to look for the how and whys, because when we no longer look, then we shut out the possibility of change.”
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MOCA Cleveland apologizes second time publicly for canceling show after black artist accuses it of censorship - cleveland.com
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