Before Phillip Guston, there was Shaun Leonardo.
The postponement of Guston’s retrospective scheduled to open this summer at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. made international headlines, provoking curiosity far outside insular art world circles.
"This additional time will allow us to slow down, get past COVID, and bring the Gallery's community together in person for challenging conversations that will help inform how we rethink the exhibition,” Kaywin Feldman, director, National Gallery of Art, said in a statement released November 5 announcing the exhibition will now debut May 1, 2022 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Similarly, in March, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland cancelled the presentation of Leonardo’s “The Breath of Empty Space” exhibition, “after people both inside and outside moCa expressed concerns that the museum was not prepared to support the show responsibly and that its impact could be harmful to our community,” the institution said in a statement, adding, “these concerns included ethical questions about the representation of Black trauma and death, and criticism that moCa was not in a position to center the lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color before tackling issues such as anti-Black, state-sanctioned violence.”
Leonardo wasn’t buying it.
