NCAC -- Policing art
From NCAC email
With high-profile police brutality stories making national headlines, it is natural that young artists would seek to confront these issues in their work. But outside pressure—often from police groups—has led some schools to curtail student speech and artistic freedom.
A March student exhibit at a local mall in Gretna, Louisiana included a piece (http://www.wdsu.com/news/local-news/new-orleans/antipolice-artwork-removed-from-student-exhibition/31859438 featuring an image of a police officer and the text "Join the Force & Get Away with Murder." According to one news account, the school made sure it "was removed once it was brought to their attention."
While the source of the complaint was not clear, in other cases police officials were the ones criticizing art they deemed offensive or unflattering. At Oxon Hill High School in Prince George's County, Maryland, the Honors Arts Studio put up an installation that tackled issues of police brutality and racial profiling.
As we described it at the NCAC blog (http://ncac.org/blog/donttakeitdown-students-speak-out-over-removal-of-police-brutality-artwork/ :
A mannequin painted white dressed in a blue uniform with a badge on the left chest. Attached to the torso of the mannequin is a newspaper that reads “Obituaries,” accompanied by photos of recently deceased black men and statistics about police brutality. To the side of the mannequin is a silhouette of a person with their hands up. The figure is wearing a white t-shirt painted on it are holes dripping red paint pooling in an American Flag. On the silhouette’s lower body are written expressions pertaining to their shared anxiety of police brutality: “Stop Racial Profiling” one reads.
But the piece was removed from the rotunda a few days before its planned de-installation, after the school received a complaint from the local Fraternal Order of Police, which offered this critique: "To say the display was distasteful would be an understatement."
Oxon Hill students, though, spoke up in support of free expression. They held protests on campus demanding that the school board express support for student free speech, and that "a process be implemented that allows students to appeal decisions that concern curriculum and censorship in schools."
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