The removal of Kehinde Wiley’s painting, “The Young Artists After Siamesas 1960”, commissioned by the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program in 2013 and hung in the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, is the latest example of the Trump administration’s attempts to erase the cultural impact of people of color.
Credit: Art Newspaper/Photo courtesy Roberts & Tilton, Art in Embassies, US Department of State
His efforts seek to silence the voices of history makers and those who document history.
Since Trump returned to the Oval Office, the Smithsonian Institution has faced extreme pressure over diverse art and artifacts. On the eve of America’s 250th birthday, the White House accused the National Museum of American History of promoting work that “is a political instrument to divide, dispirit and discourage our citizens.”
Wiley painted a portrait of former President Barack Obama, which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. In 2015, Wiley was awarded the U.S. State Department Medal of Arts for his “longtime contributions to Art in Embassies and cultural diplomacy.”
Through his work, Wiley challenges stereotypical assumptions about what is worthy of portraiture, upends stereotypes, and pushes back against presumed power dynamics. He weaves in cultural references to Black and Brown countries and frequently alludes to poses and imagery made famous by the so-called “Old Masters”, European artists of yore.
In his work, for example, Wiley’s “Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps” depicts a Black man in camouflage pants and Timberland boots atop a horse. The painting is a reference to “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” by Jacques-Louis David.
The U.S. State Department also took issue with Wiley’s comments on his Judith and Holofernes painting, his reimagining of a Biblical account of a woman who saved her town by killing an invading general – an act depicted numerous times in art, including in a 17th-century painting by Giovanni Baglione. Wiley’s heroine is Black, and he described her pose as “a play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing”.
The U.S. State Department cited multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and assault against Wiley—including a lawsuit— which he has consistently denied.
President Trump has also been accused by at least 28 women of sexual misconduct in incidents as far back as the 1970s and was ordered by a judge in a civil trial to pay millions in financial damages to writer E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and defamation.
The Emancipator reached out to Wiley for comment but has not received a response.
