A panel discussion co-presented by Zócalo Public Square, Japanese American National Museum (JANM), and The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).
Date: Monday, February 23, 2026
Time: 7:30 – 9:30 p.m. PT
Location: Online and Los Angeles
From MOCA:
Critics, including from the government, have often tried to impose their own viewpoints, suppressing voices in the process: U.S. Rep. George Anthony Dondero’s midcentury McCarthyist strike against modern art as “communistic”; Hamilton County, Ohio’s 1990 obscenity charge against Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and its director for exhibiting a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective; the National Gallery of Art’s decision to cancel its 2018 Chuck Close retrospective exhibition following allegations of the artist’s sexual misconduct, in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
Censorship is a worsening challenge, as a March 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” takes aim at museums, parks, and other institutions in an effort to revise and reshape how America presents its history and culture. What can museums do when the state imposes revisionist history on them? Can curation be a form of self-censorship? Is censorship ever good? And what have museums done to protect their freedom of expression and the separation between art and state?
Register here.
If you’re in the area, in-person attendees are invited to continue the conversation with the speakers and each other at a post-event reception at Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel.
