A White Artist's Painting Of Emmett Till Sparks Protest, Controversy And A Viral Hoax

At the Whitney, a protest against Dana Schutz' painting of Emmett Till: \"She has nothing to say to the Black community about Black trauma.\" pic.twitter.com/C6x1JcbwRa

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At the Whitney, a protest against Dana Schutz' painting of Emmett Till: "She has nothing to say to the Black community about Black trauma." pic.twitter.com/C6x1JcbwRa
Scott W. H. Young (@hei_scott) March 17, 2017

On Thursday morning, The Huffington Post received an email claiming to be from artist Dana Schutz, requesting that her painting Open Casket be removed from the 2017 Whitney Biennial because of the harm it inflicted upon black viewers.

The email was soon revealed to be a hoax. Stephen Soba, Director of Communications at the Whitney Museum of American Art, told HuffPost that Schutz was in no way involved with the letter. For a brief period, however, it appeared to offer a long-awaited response to the outpouring of anger, pain and controversy surrounding the painting.

Schutzs painting, on view now at the Whitney, depicts the disfigured face of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black teenager who was tortured and beaten to death in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white women an allegation his accuser admitted to be false earlier this year. Emmetts mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted Tills casket be left open during his funeral, so that the racist brutality inflicted upon her son would not go unseen. Photos depicting Tills battered body and face were published in the magazine Jet, becoming a catalyst in the fight for civil rights.

The violence inflicted upon Till as a black American is not a thing of the past. I made this painting in August of 2016 after a summer that felt like a state of emergency, Schutz explained to Brian Boucher at Artnet News. [T]here were constant mass shootings, racist rallies filled with hate speech, and an escalating number of camera-phone videos of innocent black men being shot by police. The photograph of Emmett Till felt analogous to the time: what was hidden was now revealed.

The goal of the Whitney Biennial the longest-running survey of American art has long been to gauge the state of art in America today . The 2017 exhibition, co-curated by Mia Locks and Christopher Y. Lew, was imagined amid the chaotic and anxiety-inducing backdrop of the 2016 presidential election. This biennial arrives at a time rife with racial tensions, economic inequities and polarizing politics, the curators write in the exhibitions introductory statement, inviting us to pause and pose questions in a tumultuous world.

The Biennial was described as humanist and pro-diversity by New York Times critic Roberta Smith , for its more-inclusive roster of artists compared to years past, as well as its consideration of themes including misogyny, immigration, racism, violence and religion. And yet the most audible conversation surrounding the show has revolved around the museums privileged exploitation of black suffering. It has also revolved around a white artist.