An exhibition featuring California artist Diego Marcial Rios at San Mateo City Hall has taken down all 20 works on view due to censorship, The Art Newspaper reports. Selected to show at the city hall gallery and the main branch of the municipal library after an open call for a public art exhibition programme, the Chicano artist’s works depict police violence targeted at racial minorities in the United States. However, two days after the exhibition opened on 17 July, the artist was told – by the gallery coordinator for the San Mateo Public Library via email – that some of his paintings ‘have caused concern amongst city employees both at city hall and at other facilities’ .
The artist was initially asked to swap certain works from the exhibition, but later discovered that the entire display had been taken down.
The censorship appears connected to the local police department. Following the notice from the gallery coordinator, the artist also received an email from Fox News Digital, who asked him for a response to ‘the backlash from the San Mateo Police Department’. Rios expressed that this was his first encounter with censorship for his works. ‘What is the police department so scared of?’ he asked. ‘Why the insecurity?’
In response, the interim San Mateo city manager Christina Horrisberger told The Art Newspaper that ‘City Hall is intended to be a welcoming place’, but that Rios’s works offended ‘numerous people in the community, including members of the public and staff from several departments throughout the organisation’. The city officials have taken down the show and suspended the exhibition programme so that it can create ‘a welcoming and respectful environment for people of all viewpoints’.
