Drexciya-inspired Smithsonian exhibit denounced by White House · News ⟋ RA
- The exhibit, which closed in 2024, highlighted the Detroit duo’s vision of an underwater realm populated by the descendants of enslaved women who drowned during the Middle Passage.
- A recent exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art that highlighted Detroit techno duo Drexciya has been denounced by the White House in a new list of objectionable art.
Titled From the Deep: In the Wake of Drexciya with Ayana V. Jackson,” the exhibit explored James Stinson and Gerald Donald’s Afrofuturist vision of Drexciya, an “underwater kingdom populated by the children of pregnant women who had been thrown overboard or jumped into the ocean during the Middle Passage.” It ran from March 2023 through April 2024, and featured original artworks by the New Jersey-based Jackson as well as collaborations with costume designers from Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana and Angola.
Although the exhibit received critical acclaim upon its launch, it’s now among the works of art targeted in a new communiqué from the Trump administration criticizing The Smithsonian’s programming. Published under the headline “The President Is Right About The Smithsonian,” the article criticized multiple exhibitions at the Washington, D.C. museum, including a show celebrating the 50th anniversary of Title IX that expressed support for transgender athletes; a 2020 painting of refugees crossing the South Texas border wall by Rigoberto A. González; and an “LGBTQ+ History” exhibit at the American History Museum.
The list appears to be drawn from an article in conservative magazine The Federalist, which described the American History Museum as “wall-to-wall anti-American propaganda.” Its publication arrives shortly after government officials sent a letter to the Smithsonian demanding the museum submit their current and future plans for exhibitions, social media content and other programming for approval. The letter informed the Smithsonian’s director, Lonnie Bunch, the museum had 120 days to comply with the “comprehensive review” of its holdings, part of a push to align the institution with Trump’s cultural agenda ahead of the US’s 250th anniversary.
In a June statement, The Smithsonian emphasized its commitment to remaining “free from political or partisan influence.” A number of artists, including González, have objected to the White House’s characterization of their work—in July, the painter Amy Sherald also withdrew an exhibition from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery due to a dispute over one featured portrait, “Trans Forming Liberty,” that depicted a trans woman in a blue gown holding a torch.
“We’re talking about erasure every day,” Sherald told NPR at the time. “And so now I feel like every portrait that I make is a counterterrorist attack…to counter some kind of attack on American history and on Black American history and on Black Americans.”
Revisit RA’s 2018 video essay Why Drexciya took Detroit electro underwater.
Photo: Collection of Ayana R. Jackson/Courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim Gallery