13 Notable Removals of Artwork—Through Censorship, Protest, and More

Artists removing work from an exhibition (or having it removed for them) is a pointed and often political gesture—and part of a lineage covering many decades to the present. Last year, eight artists called for their work to be removed from the Whitney Biennial in protest of the chair of the museum’s board. Since then, Phil Collins and Ali Yass pulled out of a MoMA PS1 show about the Gulf Wars, and a group of artists removed their art from the Aichi Triennale in Japan over claims of c