Final month the College of North Texas in Denton cancelled a solo exhibition by the Brooklyn-based artist Victor Quiñonez 9 days after it opened on the School of Visible Artwork & Design (CVAD) Gallery. The exhibition, Ni de Acquí, originated on the Boston College Artwork Galleries in September 2025 and featured sculptures and mixed-media works from Quiñonez’s I.C.E. Scream collection, which embody giant sculptural paletas (Mexican popsicles) and implicitly critique the violent enforcement actions of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
Based on the artist and college members, the exhibition was closed with out advance discover, and its street-facing home windows had been lined with brown paper. In an electronic mail cited by Glasstire, CVAD management confirmed that UNT had terminated its mortgage settlement with Boston College and was making preparations to return the works. No detailed public rationalization has been issued, however UNT college students have staged protests and native and nationwide organisations have raised considerations in regards to the exhibition’s obvious censorship.
The exhibition included large-scale translucent paleta sculptures embedded with handcuffs and firearms, an illuminated paleta cart bearing the phrase “U.S. Division of Stolen Land Safety” and work juxtaposing Indigenous iconography, pop cultural imagery and references to up to date border politics. A public reception had been scheduled for 19 February and the exhibition was to stay on view till early Might.
An instance of considered one of Victor Quiñonez’s Paleta works Courtesy of Marka27 Design Studios
The UNT college response to the present’s cancellation was swift. Members of the CVAD issued an open letter addressed to UNT’s president Harrison Keller and college management, expressing concern about what they characterised as an absence of transparency and the potential erosion of educational requirements, in line with Glasstire. Graduate college students at UNT adopted with their very own assertion, warning that the cancellation has created uncertainty for future thesis exhibitions. “It’s deeply disheartening that we should think about relocating our culminating educational work on account of considerations about institutional censorship,” the letter acknowledged, urging the college’s management to recommit to permitting freedom of speech and inventive expression.
Within the days following the exhibition’s closure, college students organised a candlelit gathering outdoors the shuttered gallery. Flowers, electrical candles and handwritten notes had been positioned on the ground beneath the papered-over home windows. College officers haven’t publicly cited a coverage violation, an exterior criticism or a legislative directive as the explanation for the cancellation. Nevertheless, some speculated that the choice was associated to the shifting political panorama for public increased training in Texas. For the reason that 2023 passage of Senate Invoice 17, range, fairness and inclusion places of work and programming at public universities have been focused as directors throughout the state have navigated heightened scrutiny over campus occasions and exhibitions.
Based on transcripts obtained by Glasstire and different shops, in conferences on 10 and 11 February, Karen Hutzel, the dean of CVAD, stated that the exhibition’s cancellation was the results of an “institutional directive”that got here from higher-ups. She reportedly stated that whereas CVAD has its personal insurance policies, these are finally outmoded by the college’s authority. And, she added, amid rising scrutiny of actions at public universities from state and federal officers, guidelines and rules are “altering every day”.
In response to the exhibition’s closure, the Nationwide Coalition Towards Censorship and the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas despatched a letter to Keller and the secretary of UNT’s board of regents calling on the college to confess its wrongdoing. “In closing the exhibition, UNT has betrayed the ideas of educational freedom, trampled upon inventive freedom and really probably violated the First Modification,” the letter reads partially. “We urge UNT to display its recommitment to its mission and insurance policies that explicitly shield and help artists’ and curators’ rights to discover political material and have interaction in social commentary in on-campus programming.”
Spokespersons for UNT and the CVAD haven’t responded to requests for remark from The Artwork Newspaper or different shops.
