Analysis of "White Artist's Painting of Emmett Till at Whitney Biennial Draws Protests"

          From the New York Times, Randy Kennedy writes about the white artist, Dana Schutz, who was selected in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, to submit an abstract painting of Emmett Till's dead body. Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two horribly racist white men in 1955, remains a symbol for the civil rights movement to this day. Till's mother demanded for an open casket at her son's funeral to show people the brutality of police in our country towards innocent black people. Kennedy further explains the protest of Dana Schutz's painting. Parker Bright, an African-American artist, stood in front of the painting, with his t-shirt, stating "Black Death Spectacle"(1). The problem with this issue of the painting, does not fall in the artist's hand. I find that anyone has freedom of speech and is allowed to express what they believe is true, but for the curators of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, it is a huge responsibility to curate important voices internationally. To curate a white person's art to represent black mourning holds a deeply embedded issue in our country. Not only does this silence black culture even more, it symbolizes the superiority of white culture in America. Kennedy's article brings up an important issue of systematic racism in our country. It is so deeply rooted that most non-black people do not see, feel, or hear these prejudices. The systematic racism of Dana Schutz's painting is not that she wanted profit from an image that was not hers to claim, it was the fact that it was chosen out of so many diverse artists from the U.S. to be internationally representative of our country.