Soft language and Hard Conversations: "Philip Guston Now" 2024 postponed

George Carlin coined the phrase Soft Language, used in his Parental Advisory, 1990 comedy show. According to Carlin, "Americans have trouble facing the truth," Carlin said. "So they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it" (Parental Advisory, 1990).

Confronting hard truths and having hard conversations regarding racial injustices in America can be painful and sometimes impossible, especially racial inequities within museums. The Guston retrospective, "Philip Guston Now", containing artworks by Philip Guston Canadian American painter, printmaker, muralist, and draughtsman, that feature KKK imagery, scheduled for June at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Also scheduled for exhibitions Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Tate Modern in London, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has postponed for four years.

In a joint statement released by the museum boards, “postponing the exhibition until a time at which we think that the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the center of Philip Guston’s work can be more clearly interpreted.”

The show was fundamentally postponed because museum boards lack diversity. And so compounds the inability of these boards to confront the history of white supremacy in America and the art world. Their use of soft language to avoid the topic is counterproductive to really solve the core racial issues at historical art institutions and within America.

How can they display works of imagery synonymous with racial violence when they reside in a sphere of denials, avoidance, and hypocrisy. Denying something that clearly exists is the foundation upon which this society thrives, and doesn't make the core issues disappear.

The lack of diversity within these spaces contributes to the perpetuating and insidious nature that decisions regarding museums refusing to display artworks that confront complex and traumatic issues such as white supremacy.

The show was essentially canceled, a lot can change in four years, though the conversations remain relevant, it's human nature to forget. This sends the wrong message to artists and the audience. The point of art is to challenge the viewer in some way, to evoke feeling or thought. As an artist, it is discouraging and demoralizing to have your work censored. Somethings are categorically and morally wrong, for example, white supremacy. Museums had a chance to ignite conversations and confront systemic issues that plague society but chose the cowardly route.

It's important that this show being postponed in this way is discussed openly and publically because it sets a bad precedent for other institutions to avoid the responsibility that they have to society. As the curators of history and art, they are shaping the views of generations of people. They made a unanimous decision to turn their backs on an opportunity to create change because they were uncomfy.