Image PP0 Public Domain.
In March 2017, American artist Dana Schutz exhibited her painting called "Open Casket" at the Whitney Biennial. Shortly afterwards, black artists called for it's removal and destruction and began blocking the painting from being viewed. Berlin-based artist Hannah Black wrote an open letter to the curators of the Whitney Biennial:
"... it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time. Although Schutz’s intention may be to present white shame, this shame is not correctly represented as a painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist—those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material. The subject matter is not Schutz’s; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go."
Image: CC0 Public Domain by Leroy Skalstad
