How Do Museums Resist Censorship?

Moderated by Elizabeth Larison, Director, Arts and Culture Advocacy Program, National Coalition Against Censorship

Museums tell America’s story. Exhibit by exhibit, they acquire, study, preserve, and interpret art and artifacts for the public, offering proof to bolster thoughtful interpretations of our national truths. But they haven’t always done so freely. 

Critics, including from the government, have often tried to impose their own viewpoints, suppressing voices in the process: U.S. Rep. George Anthony Dondero’s midcentury McCarthyist strike against modern art as “communistic”; Hamilton County, Ohio’s 1990 obscenity charge against Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and its director for exhibiting a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective; the National Gallery of Art's decision to cancel its 2018 Chuck Close retrospective exhibition following allegations of the artist's sexual misconduct, in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

Censorship is a worsening challenge, as a March 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” takes aim at museums, parks, and other institutions in an effort to revise and reshape how America presents its history and culture. What can museums do when the state imposes revisionist history on them? Can curation be a form of self-censorship? Is censorship ever good? And what have museums done to protect their freedom of expression and the separation between art and state? 

Zócalo, JANM, and MOCA co-present a discussion at the top of L.A.’s art week: American Alliance of Museums board chair and museum director Devon Akmon, JANM president and CEO Ann Burroughs, and The Brick director and MONUMENTS co-curator Hamza Walker will discuss how museums resist the erasure and revision of our history and culture, and what this means for how we document our shared past, present, and future. 

We invite our in-person audience to continue the conversation with the speakers and each other at a post-event reception at Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Zócalo Public Square