The Art Museum of the Americas, a cultural venue run by the Organization of American States that is steps from the White House and the National Mall, has canceled two upcoming shows, one featuring Black artists from across the Western Hemisphere and the other showcasing queer artists from Canada. According to participants in those shows, museum officials canceled the exhibitions to comply with Trump administration orders to stamp out federal funding for “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts.
Cheryl D. Edwards, the curator for the survey of Black artists slated to open on March 21, said the decision follows executive orders from the Trump administration to eliminate federal funding for diversity initiatives. She said she received a call on Feb. 6 from Adriana Ospina, the director of the D.C. museum, notifying her that the institution had been forced to call off the exhibition.
“‘I have been instructed to call you and tell you that the museum [show] is terminated,’” Edwards says, recalling the message from Ospina. “Nobody uses that word in art — terminated.”
The Art Museum of the Americas receives its funding from the OAS, an international organization that draws support from its more than 30 member countries, above all from the United States. (Ospina declined to comment. The OAS did not return a request for comment.)
Featuring artworks by African American as well as Afro-Latino and Caribbean artists, “Before the Americas” aimed to track the influence of the transatlantic slave trade and African diaspora across multiple generations of modern and contemporary artists. The survey ranged from artists born in the 1890s to the 1990s, among them Wifredo Lam, the Cuban modernist painter and the subject of a forthcoming retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, and Elizabeth Catlett, an American and Mexican sculptor whose retrospective at the National Gallery of Art opens in March.
The U.S. contributions to the show represent works by a pantheon of Black creators, many of them rooted in the District, where Edwards lives and works as an artist. “Before the Americas” included work by Martin Puryear, who represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2019; Sam Gilliam, a postwar painter whose work sparked a revival of interest in Black abstraction; and Amy Sherald, a contemporary artist celebrated for her portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama.
The only reason Edwards was given for the show’s cancellation, she says: “Because it is DEI.” The president and conservative lawmakers have used the term as a catchall pejorative for efforts aimed at addressing social inequalities.
Andil Gosine, a Canadian artist and a professor of environmental arts and justice at York University in Toronto, says he was finalizing loan agreements for an exhibit at the Art Museum of the Americas when he received a similar call from Ospina on Feb. 5. “‘I’ve been directed to cancel your show,’” Gosine says, quoting Ospina. “There was no explanation.”
The exhibit, “Nature’s Wild With Andil Gosine” — which he describes as a “solo show with many artists” — was based on the artist’s 2021 book about queer theory and colonial law in the Caribbean. It was scheduled to open March 21 and featured works by a dozen artists, many of them queer people of color and most of them Canadian.
At the centerpiece of the show was “Landscape (Western Hemisphere)” a 2010-2012 video installation by the genre-bending Black artist Lorraine O’Grady, who died in December at 90. Gosine appears in one of the videos in this series and collaborated with her to produce another. “Her thinking was the seed of the book,” he says. “That piece was the seed of the exhibition.”
Gosine says he received formal notification of the exhibition’s cancellation on Feb. 14. “Because we recognize the importance and value of the ‘Nature’s Wild’ project, we understand and share your frustration at the challenges presented now,” reads the letter from Ospina. Copied on the communication was James Lambert, a Canadian diplomat and ambassador who serves the OAS as secretary for hemispheric affairs, whose office oversees the museum, according to the organization’s website. (Lambert did not immediately respond to a request for comment via the OAS.)
“Due to the current context and unforeseen circumstances, the Permanent Mission was informed by the AMA that the exhibit cannot proceed as planned. We understand that this decision was not taken lightly by the AMA,” reads a Feb. 20 letter to Gosine from Gillian Gillen, chargé d’affaires and deputy permanent representative of the Permanent Mission of Canada to the OAS.
The Permanent Mission of Canada to the OAS, which provided financial support for the exhibit’s installation and opening, declined to comment. Gosine said the exhibit also received support for its programming from WorldPride, the global LGBTQ festival convening in Washington this year.
Edwards says “Before the Americas” received significant support from Francisco O. Mora, the U.S. ambassador to the OAS under President Joe Biden. But Gosine’s exhibit did not receive financial support from either the Art Museum of the Americas or the United States. “The [museum] budget is not the issue,” he says.
Gosine points to a Feb. 4 executive order by President Donald Trump directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to review all U.S. relationships with international organizations, with an eye to withdrawing from those ‘contrary to the interests of the United States.’” While the OAS is a Pan-American organization, its largest contribution by far comes from the United States, totaling more than $50 million in 2024.
“Cutting these exhibits is going to do nothing to safeguard that contribution,” Gosine says.
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the OAS comprises more than 30 states from across North, South and Central America. The group has served since the Truman administration to foster human rights, economic development and social progress across the Western Hemisphere. Its museum on Constitution Avenue was officially opened in 1976 to celebrate the U.S. bicentennial.
The structure of the OAS resembles that of the United Nations, with a general assembly and multiple international agencies. Member states appoint ambassadors to the OAS; Trump said in December that he would tap former Conair executive Leandro Rizzuto Jr. for the post.
The museum’s order to cancel the exhibitions follows other effects of the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the federal government and large portions of the private sector. The National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian closed offices that focus on supporting racial minorities within those institutions and diversifying their collections and reassigned staffers who worked in them. On Tuesday, a military spokesperson confirmed the U.S. Marine Band canceled a collaboration with young musicians of color, following Trump’s orders.
Edwards says the push to root out DEI in government projects is “silencing artistic voices.” Last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked elements of those orders affecting federal contractors, grantees, publicly traded corporations and large universities, calling them “textbook viewpoint-based discrimination.”
Edwards, a Black artist who turns 71 in March, says she was born and raised in Miami under segregation. She says she has experienced institutional racism over the course of her career. But “this is just direct,” she says.
“You can’t tell me that the artists I’ve chosen for his exhibit are not top-quality,” Edwards says. “The whole museum is DEI under that definition.”
