Walking into Nathalie Karg Gallery in Lower Manhattan might feel a bit like stepping into a news story. The pieces on the walls this week are not for sale; they are artworks that have been flung into a national conversation about the limits of freedom of speech and expression protections by virtue of their creation.
Through October 25, the nonprofit Art at a Time Like This, co-founded by curators Barbara Pollack and Anne Verhallen, is showing works by artists who have “experienced censorship firsthand,” according to an information sheet. Don’t Look Now: A Defense of Free Expression centers a growing number of artists who have faced artwork removals, exhibition cancellations, and other forms of suppression for reasons including President Trump’s crackdown on DEI and anti-Palestine sentiment. Pollack also cautioned that some institutions were self-censoring, possibly a consequence of ideological funding cuts from entities like the National Endowment for the Arts.
Second-floor installation shot featuring Clarity Hayne’s “Big Birth” (2022)
Hyperallergic has reported many of the exhibition’s artists’ stories. One of the most identifiable of artworks viewers immediately see upon entering the gallery is Danielle SeeWalker’s “G is for Genocide” (2024) painting, which the town of Vail, Colorado, cited in its controversial decision to revoke her artist residency last year. The American Civil Liberties Union intervened by launching a free speech lawsuit against the municipality, which was eventually settled on terms negotiated by the artist.
“I thought what would be great is if people didn’t just see news stories, but saw the actual artworks,” Pollack told Hyperallergic in an interview at the gallery. “A one-on-one experience with an artwork gives you an entirely different feeling about the artist, their intentions, and the quality and their craftsmanship, than a photo in a news story.”
A stapled paper packet available in the gallery tells the story of each artwork and the artist’s allegations of censorship, ranging from claims that social media is taking down images to cancellations of residencies and entire art exhibitions and programs. All of the works are on loan and will be returned to the artists at the end of the show.
Andil Gosine’s “Magna Carta” (2025) (left) and Margarita Cabrera’s “Space in Between – Nopal, in collaboration with A.N. (Mexico/USA)” (2022) (right)
Don’t Look Now also includes a reproduction of Trinidadian artist Andil Gosine’s altered childhood photograph “Magna Carta” (2025). The image was intended to appear as a large-scale banner in an exhibition curated by Gosine exploring sexuality in the Caribbean that was nixed by the Art Museum of the Americas earlier this year without providing a reason. Documents reviewed by Hyperallergic in February suggested that the United States government had withdrawn funding from another exhibition on the Caribbean at the museum, whose curator claimed the show had been designated a “DEI program.”
Reached by email, Gosine said he was able to find another venue to host a “make-up” show, Nature’s Wild, in Toronto, which opened the same night as the Art at a Time Like This exhibition. While Gosine expressed appreciation for his inclusion in the show, he said, “Nothing feels triumphant about it.”
“In Don’t Look Now, the low-quality reproduction of the original banner to a smidgen of its size and force says everything about how this moment feels,” Gosine told Hyperallergic. “The art is a footnote, a note in a politically urgent story, but I long for the day when it might be given space to re-emerge as more than a footnote, and returned to its creative intention.”
Yvonne Iten-Scott’s quilt “Origin” (2023)
Yvonne Iten-Scott’s quilt “Origin” (2023) hangs upstairs. The work, resembling female anatomy, was excluded from a traveling show organized by the American Quilter’s Society over the organization’s concerns that the work “could be considered controversial,” according to individuals familiar with the situation.
Reached by email, Iten-Scott said she was honored to be part of the Don’t Look Now exhibition.
“I am feeling a sense of validation that my art is being shown alongside these other incredible artists who have also had a similar experience,” Iten-Scott said. “I hope that this exhibition sparks more conversations about artistic freedom and expression.”
Other exhibited works included Khánh Nguyên Hoàng Vũ’s “How we live like water” (2024), which pictorially represents the phrase “from the river to the sea.” The work, on display in a Walgreens window in Miami Beach, was removed by the local nonprofit Oolite Arts. Also on view are a sculpture by Margarita Cabrera, who withdrew her participation from a Smithsonian symposium, citing censorship concerns; a poster by Shepard Fairey interrogating abuses of power that was the subject of a free speech lawsuit; and a video artwork by Evan Apodaca that was removed from the San Diego airport, allegedly for criticizing the United States military.
The entrance to Don’t Look Now: A Defense of Free Expression
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) referred Pollack to some of the cases of alleged censorship that the organization was looking into. A panel event held in conjunction with the show included Elizabeth Larrison, who leads NCAC’s Arts and Culture Advocacy Program.
“Over the past 25 years, much of NCAC’s work to defend artistic freedom in the US has occurred out of public view,” Larrison told Hyperallergic. “Public-facing exhibition and event opportunities like those presented by Art at a Time Like This are valuable in that they bring visibility to this work and to the often insidious ways in which censorship threatens our democracy.”
Pollack likened the state of artistic expression to the proverbial “canary in the coal mine.”
“It is not surprising that [in] authoritarian countries, including the United States … one of the first things they crack down on is free expression,” Pollack said. “That is because often artists get to the heart of the intersection between feelings and facts and make people move to take action or feel like they’re not alone in their feelings.”
Khánh Nguyên Hoàng Vũ’s “How we live like water” (2024)
Evan Apodaca’s “Monumental Interventions” (2023), which was allegedly removed from the San Diego Airport for its criticism of the military.
