The Unbreakable Spirit and Determination of Artists

“I was born and raised in Miami, Florida, and part of my life was lived during segregation. My family protected us. They also educated me,” explained artist, educator and curator Cheryl Edwards during a recent interview with me. “My mother always told me when you are faced with your enemies, you kill them with [your] success.”

That guidance, steeped in determination, partially accounts for the seemingly indestructible resilience possessed by many African Americans in the U.S. — despite continuous assault from slavery, through the Civil War, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement. It also appears to fuel Edwards’ efforts to resurrect an exhibition that was recently canceled after she spent more than two years curating it.

The Before the Americas show, featuring paintings, sculptures and prints by 40 Afro-Latino, Caribbean and African American artists, was expected to open this month at the Art Museum of the Americas located in DC. The AMA is part of the Organization of American States (OAS), an institution comprised of 35 member countries. In 2017, the group passed a resolution honoring people of African descent. The exhibition was to be an extension of that recognition. 

Instead, Before the Americas fell victim to President Donald Trump’s frontal assault on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and his administration’s elimination of funding for various U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs, Edwards told me during an extensive interview via Zoom.

This is no mere mess in aisle nine. 

The cancellation affected more than two dozen artists; academic scholars and individual collectors who had agreed to speak on educational panels; and several major institutions — the OAS, the DC Public Library’s flagship Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, George Mason University, American University’s Katzen Arts Center and Addison/Ripley Gallery — that had loaned artwork for the show from their private collections. 

Next week, on April 5, Edwards and others are holding a reception at The Kreeger Museum to help replace government funds that were snatched from the project because of the AMA’s cancellation and to demonstrate public and private support for the artists and their works.

“It’s not enough to be upset,” Edwards told me during our conversation. “We have to open this exhibit. In the face of discrimination based upon race, class and caste, you have to act.”

Initially, everything related to this seminal project seemed to be going well. Then Trump, the destroyer, the maniac arrived.

In December, Francisco Mora, then U.S. ambassador to the OAS, offered $20,000 for the exhibition, enough that Edwards said she could “breathe.” Her fundraising efforts were paying off.

However, on Jan. 30, just 10 days after Trump’s inauguration, Edwards received a call from AMA’s director, Adriana Ospina, indicating the OAS finance chief was ordering a halt to the project until “they could decide whether it was going forward or not.” 

Edwards said she told Ospina that she would have to “write an email and tell people” what was happening. Within days, on Feb. 6, while Edwards was in Costa Rica for an arts residency, Ospina phoned her to say the Before the Americas exhibit was canceled.

“I’ll never forget. It was two hours before my opening [for the residency]. She said that the show was terminated. She was instructed to call me and tell me that. 

“I said, ‘Well, what if we raised the money?’” 

Edwards hoped to bide time until she could return to the U.S. She believed she could make up the funds that had been cut, since she had already raised $5,000 for the exhibition from other sources. But Ospina told her, “No. This is terminated because it’s DEI.” 

“Do you have a letter?” Edwards asked. She never received a copy of that correspondence.

Ospina did not respond to my telephone calls to AMA seeking a comment about the cancellation of the event.

“This means that if you are not a straight white male who wants to do art about a particular racist period of American history, then you and your creativity and your work are not acceptable,” said Edwards.

Soon after taking office, Trump and his minions went to war on USAID and on DEI. Ironically, Trump once celebrated diversity and inclusion, especially in his Department of Education. The concept and policy had been features of the Obama administration and were later expanded under President Joe Biden, but they were generally embraced or at least accepted by Trump in his first term. 

Now, however, Trump has taken a sledgehammer to any initiative that has even a whiff of diversity, equity and inclusion. They have fired thousands of workers and erased or caused the cancellation of myriad programs in their feeble and flawed campaign to elevate the image and stature of white men in America.

This week, Trump issued a new executive order called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which appears intent on misrepresenting the country’s full narrative, including its racial and ethnic struggles. The order, which is not a law but rather a statement of policy, directs various agencies to take actions that would essentially ignore indisputable facts drawn from this country’s history. It’s truly the book-banning movement jumping from the page to museums and parks.

The order takes aim at the Smithsonian Institution, particularly the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the various exhibitions contained therein. It also appears to be a restructuring of the board of regents with a directive to appoint “citizen members to the Smithsonian Board of Regents committed to advancing the policy of this order.”

“It’s like 1984. It’s like living in a communist country. Everything that is happening is not what America is supposed to be,” sculptor Margery Goldberg said of the Trump administration’s rapid-fire actions in its first two months. Having owned and operated Zenith Gallery in Washington for 47 years, she has witnessed and experienced a great deal of political upheaval in the city and the nation.

Zenith has showcased many of the country’s and the DMV’s most talented artists. Next week her curated exhibition The Wonders of DC Trees opens at the MLK library; that show was funded by Events DC and supported by Casey Trees, which has lost $9 million of its federal funding since Trump’s arrival, according to Goldberg. 

“All this is doing is making artists do more,” said Goldberg. “We will fight back. We are not like law firms and  universities. We are not going to cower to this guy.”

That is the sound of the gauntlet being thrown by the arts community.

Trump and his democracy-hating crew have pulled Defense Department curricula that included reference to the famed Tuskegee Airmen, whose service helped save thousands of lives during World War II; the resulting outcry led to at least a partial reversal. They went on to remove a listing of Black military veterans buried at Arlington Cemetery — including, it appears, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who served in the Navy during the Korean War, and Gen. Colin Powell, who served as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993 and later as secretary of state under former President George W. Bush. 

Last week, Trump and his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth were roundly assailed for attempting to erase Jackie Robinson from a government website. After the public uproar and the realization that Robinson, who integrated Major League Baseball, is more American than apple pie, Hegseth and his gang of incompetents restored the information about the Hall of Famer.

I digress. Like Goldberg, Edwards and others, I am angry — actually on the verge of experiencing an episode of what is characterized in my hometown of New Orleans as “Creole crazy.”

Already Trump has forcefully inserted himself into the arts and humanities sphere. He pushed out long-standing, hard-working members of the board of directors of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and announced that he himself would serve as chair. He also has forced cutbacks at the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

These actions, including Trump’s recent executive order, are part of his sustained campaign to elevate a particular culture and cultural aesthetic over another. However, there can be no denying the presence and powerful influence of people of color in all segments of American society — long before DEI or affirmative action or any other government initiative.  

The Before the Americas exhibition considers the Americas to include North, Central and South America as well as the Dutch, Anglo and French Caribbean. The artists to be showcased are members of the Americas’ wow class of creatives over many decades: Wifredo Lam, John Beadle, Elizabeth Catlett, Alma Thomas, Lois Mailou Jones, Sam Gilliam, Samella Lewis, Jacinto Galloso, Julio Valdez, Alonzo Davis, Martha Jackson Jarvis, Renee Stout, James Phillips, Michelle Talibah and Alex Simpson, among others. 

Edwards said that the featured artists “often confront racial and colonial constructs, challenging the invisibility of their contributions within art history.” She said the exhibit explores the various influences on their work, especially around interconnectivity and the concept of “ancestral memory.” 

“There is ancestral intelligence that you see pass from generation to generation when people do things, particular things that they’ve not been taught. They’ve not been told. It just happens,” continued Edwards, citing as an example similarities in the use of certain colors, shapes and designs among artists from different eras and places.

Before the Americas, as curated, is a massive undertaking that those of us who understand the importance of building and maintaining a diverse public square representative of all voices and visions are being called to protect from these attacks on our creative institutions as well as the artists who fuel and sustain them. 

“I am sure that this is happening all across the United States. I want artists to know so that they can be prepared,” Edwards said, with the right quotient of that determination embedded in her mind and spirit by her parents and other African Americans.

She is negotiating with two local institutions to bring the exhibition to their spaces this year and next. She also hopes to organize a tour in late 2026.

“I’m not [going] to let this government stagnate arts and culture,” continued Edwards. “Our ancestors went through much worse.”

artwork: "One", painting-1979, provided by "Before the Americas" exhibition, curator Cheryl Edwards.