DON’T LOOK NOW // ART AT A TIME LIKE THIS

Marilyn Minter. Plush #5, 2014. Edition of 3 + 2 AP. Archival Inkjet Print. 19 x 13 in. Photo courtesy of the artist  

BY CLARE GEMIMA September 29, 2025

Art at a Time Like This 

Opening Reception October 10, 6-8PM

October 10 - 25, 2025 

127 Elizabeth Street, New York 

Evan Apodaca, Leopoldo Bloom, Mel Chin, Abigail DeVille, Tamar Ettun, Shepard Fairey, Andil Gosine, Clarity Haynes, Yvonne Iten-Scott, Alex Jochim, Sari Nordman, Katrina Majkut, Jean-Paul Mallozzi, Jessica Doe Mehta, Vũ Khanh Nguyen H., Shey Rivera Rios, Dread Scott, Danielle SeeWalker, Susan Silas, Kelly Sinnapah Mary, Marilyn Minter, Ali Syverson, Michelle Talibah, Spencer Tunick, and Martha Wilson.

In a climate increasingly fraught with the suppression of creative voices, the nonprofit organization Art at a Time Like This is proud to announce, DON’T LOOK NOW, the first major exhibition addressing recent censorship in the United States. The group exhibition, opening October 10, 2025 in New York City, brings together 25 contemporary artists who have experienced censorship firsthand. The works on view will affirm the shifting context for contemporary art and provide clear evidence of censorship in action. 

City officials in Arizona attempted to remove Shepard Fairey’s print, My Florist is a Dick, from the checklist of the artist's traveling solo exhibition because it offers a searing critique of police brutality. An entire exhibition by Andil Gosine, Nature’s Wild, which included ceramic works by Kelly Sinnapah Mary, was canceled by Washington, D.C.’s Art Museum of the Americas earlier this year.

The exhibition also chronicles the increasing personal and professional cost of creating provocative art. Danielle SeeWalker’s 2024 artist residency in Vail, Colorado, was rescinded over her painting G is for Genocide, which depicts a Native American woman in a keffiyeh; Yvonne Iten-Scott’s intricate quilt, Origin, was ejected from a national exhibition for its reference to the female body and, by extension, abortion rights. 

Yvonne Iten-Scott. Origin, 2025. Mixed textiles. 27 x 20 in. Photo courtesy of the artist

This exhibition is a direct outgrowth of the organization’s own history. In 2023, Art at a Time Like This faced censorship when billboard companies in Houston, Texas, refused its public art campaign, 8x5: Artists Responding to Mass Incarceration. That experience led to a 2024 symposium, Dangerous Art, Endangered Artists, and has now culminated in DON’T LOOK NOW, an unflinching survey of censorship on American soil.

As part of the exhibition’s programming, a conversation titled Censorship Now: Who Fears Artistic Freedom? will take place on October 18 at 2pm. The panel will feature Elizabeth Larison, Director of NCAC’s Arts & Culture Advocacy Program; Brian Boucher, regular contributor to Artnet, and Sara Nadal-Melsió, former director of the Whitney Independent Study Program.

Shepard Fairey. My Florist is a Dick, 2019. Print on paper. 20 x 30 in.

Art at a Time Like This is a nonprofit arts organization that provides opportunities for artists and curators to address current events and pressing issues. Now in its fifth year, it has consistently upheld the first amendment rights of its participants even when challenged, and provided platforms for artists from Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Ukraine and other locales where authoritarian regimes prevent free expression for artists. Within the United States, Art at a Time Like This has presented works by artists with experience in the criminal justice system and others with limited rights and recognition. They give special thanks to the National Coalition Against Censorship, Don’t Delete Art, and Artists at Risk Connection for their invaluable advice and encouragement. 

For more information about the organization and upcoming show, please visit www.artatatimelikethis.com or instagram.com/artatatimelikethis