Following complaints of cultural appropriation, Modern West Fine Art has stopped representing Western painter Billy Schenck. One SLC artist referred to his artwork as dehumanizing, sexually abusive and stereotypical.
, acknowledged that “the lack of curation with Billy’s last [online] show was a huge mistake on our part. Certainly the correct curation would have provided us with the insight needed to see how the work does not align with our community standards, nor the standards of the gallery.
” The post said the gallery will “pause our representation of Billy Schenck. We are taking this break with all his work to understand the depth and breadth of the effect his imagery has with our community.” In her statement to The Tribune, Stewart said, “we hope the discussions around this experience will enlighten and bring more awareness to needed changes for a more sensitive and fair treatment of Indigenous populations. Those are very big and important issues that cannot be resolved by the gallery, or even the art world alone, but we hope to be able to do our part to rebuild trust with a new, more informed perspective.” Schenck, who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, did not respond to The Tribune’s attempts to contact him. , Schenck depicted a woman, terrified of hands holding a rope behind her, and speaking into a phone, “Oh, Jesus! The woke police are here!”, who identifies as white and had recently finished a residency at Modern West, said she thought about her involvement with the gallery — and about educating herself about cultural sensitivities in the art world. “I’m having a big epiphany that white people need to do a lot more work and native people, BIPOC people should not have to be doing all the work,” Wilson told The Tribune. “It’s also made me realize that white people have been taught to be blind to this type of thing, and that’s why we are still talking about this.”, who teaches art history at the University of Utah, said that part of her job is teaching students to “recognize and begin to untangle the ugly mess of stereotype, racism and misogyny built into their historical and contemporary visual culture.” She added that Modern West’s choice to represent Schenck “makes my job harder. It tells aspiring artists, art historians, educators and future leaders that as far as representation goes, it is OK to look no further than the same old colonial narratives.” Before Modern West cut ties with Schenck, Shanidiin questioned the gallery’s rhetoric protecting the artist — and noted it took public comments from the Salt Lake City arts community to call out the content of Schenck’s work. Stewart told The Tribune that she and Cooper solicited those comments from local artists, and acted thoughtfully but not slowly after the initial complaints from Shanidiin and another artist. They took two weeks to seek comments, she said, and another week to finalize their decision to cut ties with Schenck. Shanidiin is herself an artist — one who opts not to be represented by a major gallery — and her inspiration comes, she said, from her people and the landscape. She contrasted that to Schenck’s work, which she called “threatening and in control of narratives on Indigenous land, body, identity and art.”An earlier version of the story incorrectly described where Billy Schenck’s art was displayed. According to Modern West, it did show some Schenck landscapes in its Salt Lake City gallery, but the works that drew criticism were only shown online.
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