At the beginning of the year, Shaun Leonardo, expected to open his show “The Breath of Empty Space” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland later this month. However, the museum made the decision to cancel to show in March following objections from the community and members of museum staff, a decision they have now announced they regret.
Organized by independent curator John Chaich, the museum told the artist that following a “troubling community response” it became clear that they “were not prepared to engage with the lived experiences of pain and trauma that the work evokes.” Thus, the exhibition, centred around drawings of victims of police violence, was cancelled.
Jill Snyder, the director of the museum, said that the complaints she heard, were by and large that the work “stirs the trauma back up for the very community that it is intending to reach, and also that there is a way in which institutions like MoCA put that pain and trauma on display disrespectfully and somewhat gratuitously — that there is a performative aspect to our presentation of it.”
Leonardo wrote an email to his followers on 6 June revealing that the show was no longer going ahead. He wrote: “I must make it clear that I was never given the opportunity to be included in outreach, and therefore, never had a moment to engage any community member regarding the show.”
Synder published a public apology to Leonardo this weekend, which read: “I would like to acknowledge our failure in working through the challenges this exhibition presented together with Mr. Leonardo. In doing so, we failed the artist, we breached his trust, and we failed ourselves.”
She concluded: “The work of anti-racism involves taking responsibility and supporting risk. We did not do this. We failed. We are learning now.”
The New York Times concludes: “The conflict over the Cleveland exhibition reveals that even if the work is by an artist of colour, an institution needs to do the proper outreach first to lay the groundwork for a sensitive show.”
