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National Coalition Against Censorship’s Don’t Delete Art Issues New Advisory Resource Warning Artists of Age Verification Laws

By |2026-09-01T12:03:26-04:00September 1st, 2026|News|

Today, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) announced a new resource as part of Don’t Delete Art (DDA), its initiative supporting artistic freedom online. The resource, titled Online Age Verification: An Advisory for Artists with Websites, provides a primer on the swath of new age verification laws in the United States, and their potential impact on artists who host [...]

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Artist Feature: Van Burgo Collective (Lorenzo Triburgo and Sarah Van Dyck)

By |2026-07-02T12:49:16-04:00June 29th, 2026|Artist Feature, News|

Monumental Resistance: Stonewall, (24 hours standing at Stonewall), still image from timelapse video, 2018 (1) In the past year and a half, the federal government’s efforts to suppress LGBTQ+ cultural expression have been unmistakeable, yet the blueprint for these censorship pressures has long been fomenting in states like Florida and Texas, where challenges to LGBTQ+ books [...]

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National Coalition Against Censorship Brings Don’t Delete Art Into Its Arts and Culture Advocacy

By |2026-06-17T10:56:46-04:00June 16th, 2026|News, Press Releases|

Today, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) is excited to announce that Don’t Delete Art (DDA) is now an official component of its Arts and Culture Advocacy work. This announcement follows NCAC’s six years of active stewardship of Don’t Delete Art as a collaborative initiative addressing issues impacting the dissemination of art online. In this new chapter, Don’t Delete [...]

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National Coalition Against Censorship Launches New Resource for Artists Facing Censorship

By |2026-06-23T14:05:00-04:00June 16th, 2026|News|

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) today launches The Artist’s Guide to Defending Artistic Freedom, a new resource for artists and cultural workers. Focusing on censorship prevention and response strategies, the Guide empowers artists to defend their free expression rights. It offers negotiation tactics and talking points that can help artists make a case for the retention of a contested [...]

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NCAC Celebrates Meta’s Oversight Board’s New Policy Recommendations for Account Governance

By |2026-06-04T13:02:01-04:00June 4th, 2026|News|

Today the National Coalition Against Censorship commended Meta’s Oversight Board regarding its recent decision to establish new policy recommendations for account governance. Read the full statement below. Excerpted from the full decision: Part 6:  Account Governance Good Practices: guiding principles to the industry suggested by the Meta Oversight Board. Respecting Users’ Rights to Clear and Comprehensive [...]

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Time to… Read the Constitution: Artistic Expression is Protected Speech

By |2026-07-10T12:04:30-04:00June 4th, 2026|News|

Miniluv. Mural mockup by Seth Indigo Carnes. 2025. Image courtesy of the artist. Today the National Coalition Against Censorship and Artists Equity Group condemned town officials of Rockland, NY, whose actions resulted in the censorship of a mural by a local artist. Though the mural was commissioned for an external facade of a privately-owned building, [...]

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Curating In the Shadows Of Spectacle: Strategies For Protecting Artistic Freedom

By |2026-06-16T11:49:45-04:00June 3rd, 2026|News|

Essay originally commissioned by and published for Full Bleed, Issue 08, in May, 2025 Early this year, several photographs were removed from public display at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas after attracting criticism from local officials, who declared them “indecent” and a “radical perversion.” A formal criminal investigation was launched around the works, [...]

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Don’t Delete Art Launches Social Media Collaboration with Free the Nipple in March 2026

By |2026-06-16T15:57:37-04:00March 4th, 2026|News|

Today, Don’t Delete Art (DDA)—an initiative uniting advocacy groups and artists in the defense of artistic freedom online—launches a two-month social media collaboration with Free the Nipple—a global body-equality campaign focused on destigmatizing nipple exposure—to support and empower artists facing censorship online for depicting female-presenting nipples.  Titled Don’t Delete Art x Free the Nipple (DDA x FTN), the initiative [...]

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Pepperdine University Censorship Sparks Artist Protest at Weisman Museum

By |2025-10-22T14:09:17-04:00October 17th, 2025|News|

Elana Mann, Portrait of Derrick Maddox; artist and musician, part of the Call to Arms Comrades series, 2017-2025 At the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University, an exhibition titled Hold My Hand In Yours was shuttered nearly six months early after several of its artists withdrew their works in protest of the University’s censorship [...]

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NEW TRAVEL BAN WILL HAVE COMPOUNDING EFFECTS ON CULTURE IN THE US

By |2025-06-30T13:44:41-04:00June 30th, 2025|News|

The Trump administration’s latest travel ban went into effect this month, affecting travel from 19 countries. It bars entry to citizens of Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, and places significant visa restrictions on nationals of Burundi, Cuba, Laos,  Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. Though it was [...]

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Contemporary Culture Requires Artistic Freedom—Especially in times of Political Crisis

By |2025-05-29T17:18:16-04:00May 29th, 2025|News|

Today the National Coalition Against Censorship condemned the decision made by the Whitney Museum of American Art to unilaterally cancel a performance organized by the Curatorial Cohort of its Independent Study Program (ISP). The museum claims that, in a politically provocative introduction of the work at an unaffiliated venue several months earlier, one of the visiting artists violated the museum’s [...]

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CENSORED ARTISTS AND THEIR STORIES: MICHELLE HARTNEY

By |2025-04-03T16:21:48-04:00April 3rd, 2025|Artist Feature|

In March of 2023 Michelle Hartney’s collaborative mixed media installation work titled Unplanned Parenthood was met with censorship in Idaho. In March 2025, calls for censoring the work nearly succeeded again in Illinois. Hartney met with ACAP Director Elizabeth Larison and shared more about the project, and why she believes some audiences are afraid of its powerful message. He [...]

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NCAC Alarmed by Mayoral Order to Censor an Art Billboard Associated With Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts

By |2025-02-03T16:58:24-05:00February 3rd, 2025|News|

The National Coalition Against Censorship is dismayed by the news of the premature removal of an art billboard that is part of a temporary project with the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, shortly after Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed called for its deinstallation. The billboard shows a 1965 Spider Martin photograph of state troopers staring down Black civil rights protesters [...]

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NCAC Condemns Chicago City Council’s Efforts to Censor Art Exhibition Criticizing Government Actions

By |2025-02-03T15:58:35-05:00January 24th, 2025|News|

January 23, 2025 — Today, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) expressed alarm at Chicago city councilmembers’ attempts to censor political artwork on view in an exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center. Government officials’ efforts to silence speech because of distaste for its political position raise acute First Amendment concerns. The artwork in question is a massive, two-sided papier-mache puppet [...]

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NCAC Decries Art Censorship at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

By |2025-05-12T14:10:15-04:00January 9th, 2025|News|

Photo Credit: Composite image of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and Sally Mann’s A Perfect Tomato(1990), edited by NCAC staff UPDATE 4/24/2025: VICTORY! The Fort Worth Police Department has safely returned the artworks belonging to Sally Mann that were seized from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth as part of an unfounded criminal investigation. [...]

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A Call to MSU: End Censorship, Protect Artistic Expression

By |2024-12-11T11:13:58-05:00October 15th, 2024|News|

(Left) Samia Halaby, Six Golden Heroes, 2021 & (Right) Alia Farid, Piquete en el Capitolo, 2023 UPDATE 2/02/2024: Success! NCAC has received reports that the artwork by Alia Farid, Piquete en el capitolio, has been returned to the original location selected by the exhibition’s curators–an implicit admission that MSU was wrong to relocate the work in the [...]

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NCAC Decries Lubbock’s Art Funding Cut Targeting LGBTQ+ Programming

By |2024-11-01T15:58:23-04:00August 8th, 2024|News|

UPDATE - August 15, 2024: Following advocacy efforts and community concern, the Lubbock city council considered whether to fully reinstate the funding without any restrictions. In the final vote, the City Council approved a greatly reduced grant of $5,000 for security at FFAT. The Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (LHUCA) expressed disappointment, but assured its commitment to [...]

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Artistic Freedom Under Fire: NCAC Denounces Vail’s Cancellation of Danielle SeeWalker’s Residency

By |2025-08-29T15:00:53-04:00August 5th, 2024|News|

Image caption: Danielle SeeWalker, G is for Genocide, 2024 UPDATE 8/28/2025: VICTORY! On August 22, 2025, the Town of Vail, Colorado, agreed to settle the First Amendment lawsuit brought against it by artist Danielle See Walker. The case establishes a precedent that a government entity may not discriminate against an individual because it dislikes or [...]

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National Coalition Against Censorship Launches Map Tracking Art Censorship Since October 7th

By |2024-07-18T16:16:22-04:00July 18th, 2024|News|

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) announces the launch of a new resource, Art Censorship Index: Post-October 7th, documenting the recent spike in censorship of art and artists invoking Israel or Palestine.  Artworks and artists referencing the subject of Israel and Palestine have long been subjects of controversy and/or censorship, but following the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and [...]

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NCAC URGES CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS NOT TO ABANDON KEHINDE WILEY EXHIBITIONS IN FACE OF ALLEGATIONS

By |2024-09-04T20:03:52-04:00June 21st, 2024|News, Statement|

Photo Credit: Ted Eytan  https://www.tedeytan.com/2018/03/02/25277 The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) raised objections today regarding recent announcements by the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Minneapolis Museum of Art, and the Joslyn Art Museum to postpone or cancel planned exhibitions featuring work by renowned American artist Kehinde Wiley. In recent weeks the artist’s behavior and moral integrity [...]

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NCAC urges Indiana University to Reschedule Exhibition of Abstract Artist Samia Halaby

By |2024-10-18T17:32:06-04:00January 11th, 2024|Letters, News|

Today, NCAC issued a letter of concern to the leadership of Indiana University, imploring the university to reverse its December 2023 decision to cancel the upcoming retrospective exhibition of renowned Palestinian-American abstract painter, Samia Halaby. “Samia Halaby: Centers of Energy” was to open in February at the university’s Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art and feature more than [...]

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Día de los Muertos altar sparks controversy over inclusion of Palestinian flag

By |2023-11-06T16:55:16-05:00November 6th, 2023|News|

The National Coalition Against Censorship is alarmed by the recent decision of El Museo del Barrio, a museum in upper Manhattan, to cancel the display of Recordar y Unificar, a Día de los Muertos altar it commissioned from artists Odalys Burgoa and Roy Baizan, for the sole reason that the work includes a scarf with the Palestinian flag on [...]

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NCAC Set to Host First Annual ‘Stand-Up for Free Speech’ Comedy Benefit

By |2024-08-19T06:15:51-04:00October 24th, 2023|Events, News|

NEW YORK— The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), in partnership with the New York Comedy Festival, is thrilled to announce the inaugural first annual comedy benefit, 'Stand-Up for Free Speech,’ hosted by Judy Gold. Event Tickets are $30, and all proceeds will support NCAC and its work to defend free speech.  'Stand-Up for Free Speech' will take place on [...]

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Artistic Expression Under Fire: Controversy in the Catherine Schweinsberg Rood Central Library

By |2023-10-24T12:09:30-04:00October 24th, 2023|News|

In Brevard County, Florida, an artist and member of the Central Brevard Art Association (CBAA), John Cielukowski, participated in the Association's "Art in Public Spaces" initiative, which hangs art in publicly-owned buildings. For the Catherine Schweinsberg Rood Central Library, the artist submitted his painting A Mother's Love, which depicts a mother cow with an ear tag, separated from her [...]

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Free speech community demands Daytona State College reschedule “Stranger Fruit” exhibition

By |2026-06-05T13:50:25-04:00September 11th, 2023|News|

As nonpartisan organizations dedicated to freedom of speech, thought, and inquiry, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida (ACLU-FL), and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) are deeply disturbed by reports indicating that Daytona State College canceled an upcoming exhibition at the school's Southeast Museum of Photography because it refers to [...]

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San Diego County Regional Airport Authority removes video installation from airport exhibition

By |2023-04-28T16:34:52-04:00April 20th, 2023|News|

Artwork credit: Evan Apodaca, Monumental Interventions, 2023 (Video still). The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has contacted the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority to express concerns over the removal of artwork by artist Evan Apodaca from an exhibition at San Diego Regional Airport. Apodaca's video installation titled Monumental Interventions explores San Diego's monuments and the role of the [...]

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National film contest seeks submissions on how youth deal with conflicting ideas

By |2023-04-25T14:49:44-04:00April 18th, 2023|News, Press Releases, Videos|

NEW YORK – As proven by the recent uptick in book banning, people often want to silence ideas that they feel are harmful or offensive. Daily, youth are confronted with views they disagree with, from school censorship to online hate speech. How are youth and young adults coping with conflicting viewpoints? The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) wants [...]

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NCAC protests decision to remove eight books from the school library in a Maine school district

By |2023-04-20T14:09:51-04:00April 17th, 2023|News|

The National Coalition Against Censorship has written to the Board of Directors at Maine School Administrative District #6 in Buxton, Maine, to protest the decision to suspend its policy for reviewing book challenges to remove eight books from the school library before reviewing a complaint.  Removed titles include Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera, [...]

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NCAC protests Sioux City Community Schools’ removal of This Book is Gay from libraries | Updated

By |2023-04-12T13:06:12-04:00April 6th, 2023|Letters, News|

Updated 4/12/2023 – The District Board President has responded to our letter. His email stated:  Primarily, the book presented safety issues as it describes how to access unsuitable websites and other “hookup” processes. It is completely inappropriate for our students.   As a result of the safety issues, we determined that the inappropriate book would be pulled.  The book [...]

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NCAC offers school admin Guidelines for Developing Policies on The Display of Student Art

By |2023-04-03T16:42:57-04:00April 3rd, 2023|News, Resources|

As challenges to school library books and instructional materials are on the rise across the country, artistic censorship in schools has received less attention. However, school districts everywhere are struggling with increased political scrutiny on curricular and extracurricular artistic expression. School administrators are increasingly feeling pressured to censor or alter visual art with potential "controversial" or "problematic" subject matter. [...]

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West Texas A&M University president bans student drag performances

By |2023-04-12T10:54:01-04:00April 3rd, 2023|News|

National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has delivered a letter to the Board of Regents at Texas A&M University System to express its concern regarding  West Texas A&M President Walter Wendler's decisions to cancel A Fool’s Drag Race and place a ban on all future campus drag performances. According to Wendler, all drag shows are an assault on human dignity [...]

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NCAC encourages Canby School District in Oregon to update their book challenge policy | Updated

By |2023-11-28T10:37:04-05:00March 30th, 2023|Letters, News|

Updated 11/28/23 - Canby School District officials voted to return eleven out of the twelve challenged books to school libraries. 3/30/23 - The National Coalition Against Censorship has sent a letter to the Canby School District in Canby, Oregon expressing our concerns with their instructional material reconsideration procedures. We encourage the Canby School Board to consider amending their policy [...]

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NCAC recommends a substantial change to proposed library media policy at Volusia County Schools in Florida

By |2023-03-27T16:59:50-04:00March 27th, 2023|Issues, News|

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written to Volusia County Schools in DeLand, Florida, to suggest an important change to proposed amendments for the district's Library Media Selection policy. In a letter to the district, NCAC expresses our concern regarding an addition to the district policy, which states that a "principal may direct the removal of material he/she [...]

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NCAC urges Martin County School District to improve book challenge policy after removal of 100 books

By |2023-03-24T13:49:47-04:00March 24th, 2023|News|

The National Coalition Against Censorship has encouraged the school board of Martin County School District to amend their book challenge policy following the removal of nearly 100 books from school libraries. NCAC shared our Material Review and Policy Guidelines and Examples, a resource to help school officials address the problem of book challenges. Read NCAC's [...]

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NCAC protests viewpoint discrimination in Greenville County Public Libraries proposed policy | Updated

By |2023-11-28T10:34:14-05:00March 24th, 2023|News|

Updated 3/31/2023 – The Greenville County Library board passes its amended collections policy removing language targeting gender. On 3/24/2023 – The National Coalition Against Censorship has sent a letter to the Greenville County Library System in Greenville, South Carolina, expressing our concerns with a proposed change to their library collection policy which would limit access to children's [...]

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Book Challenges Nearly Doubled From 2021

By |2023-03-24T13:55:12-04:00March 24th, 2023|Banned Books Week, In The News, News|

CHICAGO — The American Library Association (ALA), founder of Unite Against Book Bans, released new data documenting* 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago. The unparalleled number of reported book challenges in 2022 nearly doubles [...]

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NCAC Joins PEN America and other free speech groups to oppose proposed TikTok ban

By |2024-09-30T15:28:25-04:00March 23rd, 2023|Letters, News, Press Releases|

The NCAC has joined PEN America and more than a dozen other civil liberties, digital rights, and anti-censorship organizations in a joint letter to oppose proposed federal legislation and a wholesale ban on the social media platform TikTok. The joint letter acknowledges the platform's national security and user privacy concerns. It also encourages lawmakers to explore viable solutions to prevent jeopardizing [...]

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Free speech groups condemn suppression of LGBTQ expression in Florida

By |2024-06-17T15:19:06-04:00March 22nd, 2023|In The News, News, Press Releases, Statement|

UPDATE 1/10/2024: On November 29, 2023, Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation announced a settlement with Hyatt Regency Miami, requiring the latter to pay a $5,000 fine and prohibit anyone under the age of 18 from attending performances with “specific sexual activities” as defined by Florida State Law. NEW YORK - As organizations dedicated to the freedom of [...]

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NCAC Executive Director Christopher Finan to Retire

By |2024-08-19T06:18:18-04:00March 15th, 2023|Blog, News, Press Releases|

NEW YORK - The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) announced today that Executive Director Christopher M. Finan will retire this summer after 40 years of defending free expression and First Amendment rights. Before joining NCAC in 2017, Finan was president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and executive director of Media Coalition, a trade association that [...]

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NCAC objects to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools removing library books without following policy | UPDATED

By |2023-03-28T18:12:54-04:00March 8th, 2023|Letters, News|

Updated 3/29/2023 – In response to NCAC's letter, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools claims that both books were "reviewed by their schools' Committees before being permanently removed from those schools' shelves." On 3/8/23 - The National Coalition Against Censorship has written to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in Charlotte, North Carolina, to object to the district's removal of the books Let’s Talk About It and Sex [...]

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