In 2017, the Whitney Biennial included a painting by a white artist, Dana Schutz, of the lynched body of a young black child, Emmett Till.
D\'Souza is the editor of the forthcoming Making it Modern: A Linda Nochlin Reader ..
Her work appears regularly in 4Columns.org , where she is a member of the editorial advisory board, as well as in publications including the Wall Street Journal , ARTnews , Garage , Bookforum , Momus and Art Practical .
Whitewalling takes a critical and intimate look at these three Acts in the history of the American art scene and asks: when we speak of artistic freedom and the freedom of speech, who, exactly, is free to speak? Aruna D\'Souza writes about modern and contemporary art, food and culture; intersectional feminisms and other forms of politics; how museums shape our views of each other and the world; and books.
It lays bare how the art world--no less than the country at large--has persistently struggled with the politics of race, and the ways this struggle has influenced how museums, curators and artists wrestle with notions of free speech and the specter of censorship.
Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts reflects on these three incidents in the long and troubled history of art and Race in America.
In all three cases, black artists and writers and their allies organized vigorous responses using the only forum available to them: public protest.
In 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art\'s exhibition Harlem on My Mind did not include a single work by a black artist.
In 1979, anger brewed over a show at New York\'s Artists Space entitled The Nigger Drawings .
In 2017, the Whitney Biennial included a painting by a white artist, Dana Schutz, of the lynched body of a young black child, Emmett Till
