The Association of Art Museum Directors, PEN America, and Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) have partnered to investigate the current state of censorship – and self-censorship – as viewed and experienced by AAMD members.  This survey, The Censorship Horizon, is available to read and download at PEN America's website.

This survey of AAMD members sought to understand: How much censorship do they perceive is occurring in the art museum world, in what form, and for what reason? Where do these professionals see threats of censorship emanating from? How do these recent trends compare to those of the past? And is the recent spate of state legislation targeting public education having an effect in these institutions, or is any such concern overblown? 

AAMD represents more than 220 of the leading art museums in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. This survey focused on museum directors working in the U.S. AAMD member institutions must have “an annual operating budget of $2 million or higher,” and of those museum directors who completed the survey, almost a quarter work at institutions that maintain an annual endowment of more than $20 million. This population thus represents only a sliver of the museum sector in the U.S. as a whole. Nonetheless, it is a group of individuals and institutions who can offer insight on these larger questions. 

Key findings include:

• While a vast majority of surveyed art museum directors believe that censorship is at least somewhat of a problem for art museums today, 90% of respondents do not have a written censorship policy to set out procedures for responding to formal or informal challenges, including under what conditions it might alter exhibitions.
• Common third rails in the art museum world include art that refers to the Israel/Palestine conflict, or art that criticizes Christianity, particularly when it comes to certain religiously-motivated efforts to censor nudity or sexuality. 
• Museum directors surveyed in summer 2024 tended to view censorship as a challenge that is worsening, and on the horizon — a future problem. Perceptions of future censorship threats fall along partisan lines, with 41% of respondents indicating fear of censorship from Republican officials as opposed to only 3% indicating fear of Democratic officials.
• Due to the curatorial work inherent to the museum field, the question of what qualifies as curation and what qualifies as censorship or self-censorship remains blurred. But this blurriness does not mean that censorship and curation should be equated. If the pressure to self-censor continues to rise in the art world, it is this very gray zone between curation and censorship that could be most leveraged and exploited by censors. 
   

Image courtesy of PEN America