US shows featuring Black and LGBTQ artists cancelled ‘following Trump orders’

A US cultural venue based in Washington has cancelled two shows – one featuring queer artists, and one featuring Black artists – to comply with orders from President Donald Trump not to use government funding for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The Washington Post reports that the Art Museum of the Americas, a cultural venue run by the Organization of American States (OAS), notified participants earlier this month that the shows had been pulled.

One of the cancelled shows – Before the Americas – was developed to track the influence of the transatlantic slave trade and African diaspora across multiple generations of modern and contemporary artists, featuring works by African American as well as Afro-Latino and Caribbean artists.

The other show – Nature’s Wild with Andil Gosine — was based on a 2021 book by the Canadian artist about queer theory and colonial law in the Caribbean. It had been scheduled to open 21 March and featured works by a 12 artists, many of them queer people of colour and most of them Canadian.

The OAS is international, funded by more than 30 member countries across the Americas, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada and the United States. In 2018, the general budget of OAS was $85m of which the US contributed $50m (58.8%).

Museum show ‘terminated’

The Washington Post reports that Cheryl Edwards, the curator for the survey of Black artists that had been due to open on 21 March, said the decision to cancel followed moves by the Trump administration to eliminate government funding for diversity initiatives.

She said she received a call on 6 February from the Art Museum of the Americas director, Adriana Ospina, telling her that the institution had been “forced to call off the exhibition”.

She said Ospina told her: “I have been instructed to call you and tell you that the museum [show] is terminated”.

Alongside the Art Museum of the Americas cancellations, the website Slipped Disc reported this month that a scheduled performance by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, due to take place on 21 May as part of the World Pride event, was cancelled without explanation and removed from the centre’s website.

The cancellations come after Trump, on his first day back in office on 20 January, signed an executive order titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,”

“NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA”, the US president wrote on his website Truth Social.

Since then, Trump has become president of the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington DC, after firing a number of the centre’s trustees, including its former chair, David Rubinstein, and appointed new members, including his own chief of staff, Susie Wiles and the Second Lady, Usha Vance.

Writing in The Guardian, Adrian Horton said the move went through despite outcry from performers and artists and more.

She described the new administration’s cultural decrees as “very much a part of the authoritarian playbook to suppress dissent, scapegoat select groups and seize power”.

“Trump’s efforts to exert control over art typify the strategy of a dictator,” she said.

“Pick your oppressive regime throughout time and you will find efforts to control the arts.

“If history and very recent precedent are anything to go by, then Trump and his party’s efforts to chip away at US cultural autonomy, at individual and institutional creative expression, will be one of his most corrosive and anti-democratic legacies.”