Unique Survey of Art Museum Directors Reveals Worries Over Censorship

Art museums occupy a distinct space in the landscape of American cultural and educational institutions. According to a 2021 survey of 1,200 Americans, both museum-goers and non-visitors described museums as the first and second-most trusted source of information in U.S. society, respectively. For non-visitors, museums were second only to “friends and family,” and for both groups, museums ranked far ahead of the internet, political leaders, or even media outlets.

But there is also a long history of challenges and controversies in the art-world; such is the name of the game when working within the bounds of a field that, regardless of museums’ mission to preserve the past, is often propelled to seek out the exploratory, the cutting-edge, and the avant-garde. In recent years, a spate of art exhibition cancellations at museums and other efforts to censor artistic expression around the country have generated concern in the art world and beyond. Whether it’s the censorship and cancellation of artists working on issues related to Israel and Palestine, the closing of art exhibitions accused of being insensitive to racism, or the politicization of museums’ usage of terms like “diversity” and “inclusion”, these events indicate how the creation and display of art is entwined with the U.S.’s most fraught cultural and political debates.

At the same time, we have seen a rising tide of state-mandated legislative efforts at censorship of literature and education, which has threatened to encompass museums, too. In 2023, three bills were introduced–SB 2123 in North Dakota, HB 3826/SB 506 in South Carolina, and HB 2980 in West Virginia–that would remove exemptions from criminal liability for exhibiting sexually explicit material or nudity to minors for bona fide professionals engaged in education, including museum workers. These exemptions are a vital protection for ensuring that museums can continue to share artwork that depicts nudity: if such bills were to pass, something as banal as an ancient Greek statue could open a museum or its employees to criminal liability.

All three bills failed in 2023, and, with the exception of a repeated unsuccessful effort in West Virginia in early 2024, similar bills have not been filed. Even so, the formal introduction of these bills in state legislatures represent a threat to artistic freedom, the freedom of the public, and the museum sector. Indeed, the “Project 2025” proposal from the Heritage Foundation, created to influence the incoming Trump Administration’s policies, proposes a similar attitude to sexual content in public libraries, suggesting that librarians who offer books with such content for minors—especially LGBTQ+ content—should be treated as criminals. If such policies do end up being adopted on a nationwide level, they could similarly leap from schools and libraries to the museum sector.

In light of these alarming occurrences, the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), PEN America, and Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) partnered to investigate the current state of censorship – and self-censorship – as viewed and experienced by AAMD members.

Through a survey of AAMD members we sought to understand: How much censorship do they perceive is occurring in the art museum world, in what form, and for what reason? Where do these professionals see threats of censorship emanating from? How do these recent trends compare to those of the past? And is the recent spate of state legislation targeting public education having an effect in these institutions, or is any such concern overblown?

AAMD represents more than 220 of the leading art museums in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. This survey focused on museum directors working in the U.S. AAMD member institutions must have “an annual operating budget of $2 million or higher,” and of those museum directors who completed the survey, almost a quarter work at institutions that maintain an annual endowment of more than $20 million. This population thus represents only a sliver of the museum sector in the U.S. as a whole. Nonetheless, it is a group of individuals and institutions who can offer insight on these larger questions.

Key Findings

While a vast majority of surveyed art museum directors believe that censorship is at least somewhat of a problem for art museums today, 90% of respondents do not have a written censorship policy, to set out procedures for responding to formal or informal challenges, including under what conditions it might alter exhibitions.

Common third rails in the art museum world include art that refers to the Israel/Palestine conflict, or art that criticizes Christianity, particularly when it comes to certain religiously-motivated efforts to censor nudity or sexuality.

Museum directors surveyed in summer 2024 tended to view censorship as a challenge that is worsening, and on the horizon—a future problem. Perceptions of future censorship threats fall along partisan lines, with 41% of respondents indicating fear of censorship from Republican officials as opposed to only 3% indicating fear of Democratic officials.

Due to the curatorial work inherent to the museum field, the question of what qualifies as curation and what qualifies as censorship or self-censorship remains blurred. But this blurriness does not mean that censorship and curation should be equated. If the pressure to self-censor continues to rise in the art world, it is this very gray zone between curation and censorship that could be most leveraged and exploited by censors.