The 2017 Whitney Biennial—the first one to take place at museum’s new headquarters—has been widely praised as being uplifting, well-balanced, and as artnet News’s Ben Davis pointed out in his review, as having successfully learned from the bitter controversies over race and representation that haunted the previous iteration. 
 
 Not quite. UK-born, Berlin-based artist Hannah Black has launched a campaign demanding the Biennial curators Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks remove Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket from the show, and calling for its destruction. 
 
 In addition, a small-scale protest, organized by the artist Parker Bright, took place last Friday—when the Biennial first opened to the public—with a group of five or six people standing in front of Schutz’s painting for hours, blocking it from view until the museum closed for the day. 
 
 The painting is based on a photograph of the funeral of Emmett Till, an African American boy who was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955 at the age of 14 after he had been falsely accused of flirting with a white woman. Till’s mother insisted on having an open casket funeral so people could see the brutality of the lynching, exposing the horrific extent of American racism. The press images of Till’s mutilated body, along with the fact that his murderers were subsequently acquitted, are often credited as having galvanized the Civil Rights movement in the US. 
 
 Schutz’s painting is a medium-sized canvas depicting Till’s face and chest, as he lies in his coffin. artnet News’ Christian Viveros-Fauné was impressed with the work, calling it a “powerful painterly reaction to the infamous 1955 funeral photograph of a disfigured Emmett Till,” adding that “the canvas makes material the deep cuts and lacerations portrayed in the original photo by means of cardboard relief.” 
 
 At the Whitney, a protest against Dana Schutz' painting of Emmett Till: "She has nothing to say to the Black community about Black trauma." pic.twitter.com/C6x1JcbwRa — Scott W. H. Young (@hei_scott) March 17, 2017 
 
 For Black and many others, however, the painting is so exploitative that it requires not only to be removed, but also destroyed, so it can’t circulate in the art market or be displayed in other institutions. “It’s not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun,” Black argues. 
 
 Here’s her open letter to the Biennial curators in full: 
 
 To the curators and staff of the Whitney Biennial: I am writing to ask you to remove Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket with the urgent recommendation that the painting be destroyed and not entered into any market or museum. As you know, this painting depicts the dead body of 14-year-old Emmett Till in the open casket that his mother chose, saying, “Let the people see what I’ve seen.” That even the disfigured corpse of a child was not sufficient to move the white gaze from its habitual cold calculation is evident daily and in a myriad of ways, not least the fact that this painting exists at all. In brief: The painting should not be acceptable to anyone who cares or pretends to care about Black people because it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time. Although Schutz’s intention may be to present white shame, this shame is not correctly represented as a painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist—those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material. The subject matter is not Schutz’s; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go. Emmett Till’s name has circulated widely since his death. It has come to stand not only for Till himself but also for the mournability (to each other, if not to everyone) of people marked as disposable, for the weight so often given to a white woman’s word above a Black child’s comfort or survival, and for the injustice of anti-Black legal systems. Through his mother’s courage, Till was made available to Black people as an inspiration and warning. Non-Black people must accept that they will never embody and cannot understand this gesture: The evidence of their collective lack of understanding is that Black people go on dying at the hands of white supremacists, that Black communities go on living in desperate poverty not far from the museum where this valuable painting hangs, that Black children are still denied childhood. Even if Schutz has not been gifted with any real sensitivity to history, if Black people are telling her that the painting has caused unnecessary hurt, she and you must accept the truth of this. The painting must go. Ongoing debates on the appropriation of Black culture by non-Black artists have highlighted the relation of these appropriations to the systematic oppression of Black communities in the US and worldwide, and, in a wider historical view, to the capitalist appropriation of the lives and bodies of Black people with which our present era began. Meanwhile, a similarly high-stakes conversation has been going on about the willingness of a largely non-Black media to share images and footage of Black people in torment and distress or even at the moment of death, evoking deeply shameful white American traditions such as public lynching. Although derided by many white and white-affiliated critics as trivial and naive, discussions of appropriation and representation go to the heart of the question of how we might seek to live in a reparative mode, with humility, clarity, humor, and hope, given the barbaric realities of racial and gendered violence on which our lives are founded. I see no more important foundational consideration for art than this question, which otherwise dissolves into empty formalism or irony, into a pastime or a therapy. The curators of the Whitney Biennial surely agree, because they have staged a show in which Black life and anti-Black violence feature as themes, and been approvingly reviewed in major publications for doing so. Although it is possible that this inclusion means no more than that blackness is hot right now, driven into non-Black consciousness by prominent Black uprisings and struggles across the US and elsewhere, I choose to assume as much capacity for insight and sincerity in the biennial curators as I do in myself. Which is to say—we all make terrible mistakes sometimes, but through effort the more important thing could be how we move to make amends for them and what we learn in the process. The painting must go. Thank you for reading, Hannah Black Artist/writer Whitney Independent Studies Program 2013–14 
 
 The letter has been signed by over 30 people, although the initial iteration, published yesterday on Facebook, included more signatories of all colors. 
 
 However, a few hours after publishing, Black updated her post, saying: “In response to some helpful criticism, I’m now only including Black co-signs. Non-Black people super very welcome to help get painting destroyed tho in other ways.” 
 
 artnet News has asked Hannah Black and the Whitney Museum for comment, as well as Dana Schutz via her Berlin gallery CFA. We will update the piece accordingly. 
 
 UPDATE: 
 
 Whitney Biennial curators, Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks, sent the following statement to artnet News: 
 
 The 2017 Whitney Biennial brings to light many facets of the human experience, including conditions that are painful or difficult to confront such as violence, racism, and death. Many artists in the exhibition push in on these issues, seeking empathetic connections in an especially divisive time. Dana Schutz’s painting, Open Casket (2016), is an unsettling image that speaks to the long-standing violence that has been inflicted upon African Americans. For many African Americans in particular, this image has tremendous emotional resonance. By exhibiting the painting we wanted to acknowledge the importance of this extremely consequential and solemn image in American and African American history and the history of race relations in this country. As curators of this exhibition we believe in providing a museum platform for artists to explore these critical issues. 
 
 Follow artnet News on Facebook: ||||| Dana Schutz’s depiction of the mutilated body of a 14-year-old African American boy has been accused of using black death as racialized ‘spectacle’ 
 
 A painting included in this year’s Whitney Biennial in New York is being protested for perceived racial insensitivity. 
 
 Open Casket by American painter Dana Schutz depicts the mutilated corpse of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy murdered in 1955 after it was falsely claimed he flirted with a white woman. 
 
 Whitney Biennial 2017: Trump's shadow looms over politically charged show Read more 
 
 “Many in the black art community are upset by the work,” says Parker Bright, who has been spurred to picket the painting daily since the exhibition opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art on Friday. Standing, barring museum visitors’ view of the work for up to four hours a day, Bright wears a T-shirt on to which he has written “No lynch mob” on the front, and “Black death spectacle” on the back. “I wanted to confront people with a living, breathing black body.” 
 
 Bright’s complaint is echoed on social media, with one Twitter user posting that Schutz was a “white woman profiting off of black murder caused by a white woman”. 
 
 Hannah Black, an artist who has previously taken part in a residency at the Whitney, has gone so far as to claim the painting should be destroyed. Black adds in an open letter: “The subject matter is not Schutz’s; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights.” 
 
 Schutz countered in an emailed statement: “I don’t know what it is like to be black in America, but I do know what it is like to be a mother. Emmett was Mamie Till’s only son. The thought of anything happening to your child is beyond comprehension.” 
 
 Emmet Till was visiting family in Money, Mississippi when it was alleged he grabbed shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant, made sexual comments and whistled at her. On hearing of the incident, Bryant’s husband, Roy, together with his half-brother, JW Milam, kidnapped Till, killed the boy and left his body by the side of the Tallahatchie river. Roy Bryant and Milam were acquitted by an all-white jury. In January, Carolyn Bryant, now 72, admitted she had made up much of her testimony. 
 
 Till’s mother had insisted on an open casket to demonstrate the extent of the injuries that befell her son. Schutz’s painting is drawn from photographs of this. 
 
 Schutz has won critical acclaim for her semi-abstract, lyrical works. While her paintings, which have fetched up to $482,500 at auction, are not typically as overtly political as Open Casket, previous subjects include Michael Jackson’s autopsy and the 2014 altercation between Solange Knowles and Jay Z. 
 
 Woman at center of Emmett Till case tells author she fabricated testimony Read more 
 
 Christopher Y Lew, one of the curators of the exhibition at the Whitney notes that Shultz made the work in response to the number of African Americans killed in by US police in recent years. 
 
 “It comes at such a polarized time in America,” Mia Locks, Lew’s co-curator, said when asked on the issue of whether Till’s murder was an appropriate subject for a white artist. “Groups are getting caught up in their own bubbles, speaking only to each other. 
 
 “We were aware that this was sensitive work on some level. The horrific murder of Till is something we all have to confront, regardless of race.” 
 
 “It is easy for artists to self-censor” Schutz said. “To convince yourself to not make something before you even try. There were many reasons why I could not, should not, make this painting … (but) art can be a space for empathy, a vehicle for connection.” 
 
 The artist added that the work will not be for sale. 
 
 This is not the first time the Whitney Biennial has been embroiled in a row over racially insensitive work. The YAMS collective, a group of musicians, poets, actors, writers and artists, pulled their participation in 2014 in response to the inclusion of artist Joe Scanlon’s work. Scanlon, who is white, makes work under the pseudonym “Donelle Woolford”, a black woman. 
 
 Black warns in her open letter that the concerns of black artists on Schutz’s painting will be “derided by many white and white-affiliated critics as trivial and naive”. ||||| Ms. Schutz, who first exhibited the painting last year in a gallery in Berlin, has stated that she intends never to sell the work. In a statement on Tuesday, Ms. Schutz said: “I don’t know what it is like to be black in America but I do know what it is like to be a mother. Emmett was Mamie Till’s only son. The thought of anything happening to your child is beyond comprehension. Their pain is your pain. My engagement with this image was through empathy with his mother.” She added: “Art can be a space for empathy, a vehicle for connection. I don’t believe that people can ever really know what it is like to be someone else (I will never know the fear that black parents may have) but neither are we all completely unknowable.” 
 
 The curators said that they wanted to include the painting because many of the exhibition’s artists focus on violence — racial, economic, cultural — and they felt that the work raised important questions, especially now, in a political climate in which race, power and privilege have become ever more urgent issues. 
 
 “For us it was so much about an issue that extends across race,” said Mr. Lew, who along with his co-curator, Ms. Locks, met with Mr. Bright on Tuesday to discuss his protest. “Yes, it’s mostly black men who are being killed, but in a larger sense this is an American problem.” 
 
 Ms. Locks said: “Right now I think there are a lot of sensitivities not just to race but to questions of identities in general. We welcome these responses. We invited these conversations intentionally in the way that we thought about the show.” She added that she felt the painting was a means of “not letting Till’s death be forgotten, as Mamie, his mother so wanted.” 
 
 The story of Till’s murder has begun to resonate loudly again in recent months. News recently emerged that the Mississippi woman who said that the 14-year-old Till whistled at her and was verbally and physically aggressive — an account that led to Till’s abduction, torture and killing — told a historian in 2007 that she had made up the most sensational part of her account. 
 
 The Black Lives Matter movement and greater awareness of the killing of black men by the police have led to efforts to film the Till story, with at least three screen adaptations in production.
– A painting featured in the Whitney Biennial, which opened last Friday in New York, is proving so controversial that not only is it sparking protests but fellow artists are outright calling for its destruction, the Guardian reports. The painting, Open Casket by Dana Schutz, is a depiction of Emmett Till's body after the 14-year-old black boy was murdered by white men in 1955. Till had been falsely accused of flirting with a white woman. Schutz is also a white woman, and that's the problem, according to those protesting her painting. “It’s not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun,” says an open letter from artist Hannah Black quoted in artnet News. More than 30 other non-white artists have signed the letter. While Black is calling for the destruction of Open Casket, another artist, Parker Bright, has been standing in front of it for hours at a time since Friday, blocking views of the painting while wearing a shirt that reads "Black death spectacle." He calls Open Casket a "mockery" and an "injustice," the New York Times reports. Schutz, who has also painted Michael Jackson's autopsy and a fight between Jay Z and Solange Knowles, says she created Open Casket "through empathy with [Till's] mother." “I don’t know what it is like to be black in America, but I do know what it is like to be a mother," the Guardian quotes Schutz as saying. The curators of the Whitney Biennial have met with Bright but are standing behind Open Casket. (The woman whose accusation doomed Till has admitted making up parts of her story.)