Publication
Unique Survey of Art Museum Directors Reveals Worries Over Censorship
January 14, 2025
(NEW YORK)—A unique survey of U.S. art museum directors finds mounting concerns that threats of censorship have been worsening from multiple directions in recent years and that more calls might be coming in the near future to censor what they can display in exhibitions.
The survey was commissioned by the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), and PEN America, the free expression and writers group that for the past five years has documented a widespread rise in censorship in U.S. public schools and colleges, including book bans and laws erasing topics in classrooms.
Slover Linett at NORC, experts in social research in the cultural sector, administered the survey over several weeks last summer.
The three organizations joined forces to open a conversation about the state of art museum censorship and how their directors navigate such threats. The survey explores whether art museum directors view censorship threats as increasing and how they respond to them, especially amid a recent spate of state legislation seeking to impose ideologically-motivated censorship on public libraries and schools.
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.; slightly less than half of AAMD's directors responded.
The survey found that art museum directors have experienced threats of censorship from across the political spectrum over the last decade, and see more on the horizon. Nearly half of the respondents (45%) reported experiencing pressure not to publicly display art because it was “considered potentially offensive or controversial.”
Notably, 90 percent of the directors surveyed said their museums had no written policies to set out procedures for responding to formal or informal challenges, including under what conditions they might alter their exhibitions.
Believed to be the first survey of its kind, the project is especially timely as this month Texas authorities seized photographs by Sally Mann that were part of an exhibition on view at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. One of the survey partners, ARC, an international organization committed to promoting and advancing the right to artistic freedom worldwide, recently condemned the seizure and called it “alarming.”
When asked if censorship is currently a problem for art museums, only 20% of respondents reported a belief that it is “a very big problem.” However, nearly 75% indicated that it is at least “somewhat of a problem.” And 55% of respondents indicated that, compared to 10 years ago, censorship is a “much bigger problem for museums today.”
To address these challenges, the report recommends that museums create written censorship policies to guide their response to challenges and complaints, including under what conditions they might take action or alter exhibitions. Such procedures, the report said, can be a “vital baseline step towards inoculating against encroaching threats.”
Jonathan Friedman, PEN America’s Sy Syms managing director of U.S. Free Expression programs, said, “The survey confirms what we are watching in real-time: how pressures to censor are spreading across the American cultural landscape, affecting arts and literature, academia and journalism, and more. Whether it’s the cancellation of artists working on issues related to Israel and Palestine, the closing of exhibitions accused of being insensitive to racism, or the politicization of museums’ use of terms like “diversity” and “inclusion,” it is clear that the space for artistic expression and public engagement and debate is at risk of narrowing. The freedom to imagine and to create and display art is a vital part of our pluralistic democracy; it must be defended from anyone seeking to impose new strictures upon it.”
The fear of future censorship seemed to loom larger than actual, tangible experiences with censorship, but it was a recurring theme across the survey.
When asked if they have experienced “pressure not to include an exhibition or piece of art” at one point or another throughout their careers, nearly 65% of respondents said they had, from a variety of sources for a range of reasons either during the curatorial process or once an exhibition had been finished. Respondents indicated sometimes receiving complaints centered on something about an artists’ life, or because of an artist’s racial or ethnic background, and that they had received complaints originating from donors, board members, patrons, and leaders of school groups, among others. Thirty percent of respondents noted receiving complaints that the art in question was inappropriate for children on a school tour. In some cases, this pressure also influenced curatorial processes.
Asked about what groups they anticipated would place pressure on museums to censor art in the future, 44% of respondents indicated concern about government officials, with 41% specifying their concern about future censorship threats from Republican officials, and 3% specifying this concern from Democrats.
The report stated: “While these institutions and their leaders have perhaps been shielded from the increasingly repressive attacks on other institutions of public education and knowledge, many of them seemed to indicate less confidence that this would necessarily remain so in the future.”
The survey also probed how directors defined censorship and while there was no broad consensus, more than 80% indicated that if a piece of art was removed because of the artist’s race or ethnicity, or because the artist identified as LGBTQ+, then those would qualify as censorial acts. Meanwhile, over 70% of respondents indicated that if a piece of art were removed because of the artist’s stance on a political matter, or because the work was seen as “too political,” these instances, too, would qualify as censorship.
“Museum directors have the opportunity to proactively develop written policies that contain ready responses to censorship threats and their chilling effects,” the report stated.
In reporting its findings, the report concluded: “Ultimately, art is a vital vessel for social change but at the moment it has to fight for its own right to exist in a public space, the credibility of a society’s freedom is eroded. The future of the art museum field will stand to benefit from redoubling their commitment to such free expression values, particularly as they may be threatened by shifting political winds and new pressures to censor from numerous directions, in unprecedented ways.”
ABOUT AAMD
The Association of Art Museum Directors advances the profession by cultivating leadership capabilities of directors, advocating for the field, and fostering excellence in art museums. An agile, issues-driven organization, AAMD has three desired outcomes: engagement, leadership, and shared learning.
ABOUT ARC
The Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) is an international organization committed to promoting and advancing artistic freedom worldwide. We work to protect artists and cultural workers who are at risk because of their creative expression, often connected to their identities or roles within their communities. ARC helps artists at risk overcome challenges like persecution, censorship, threats, and violence from both state and non-state actors.
ABOUT PEN America
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.