Two major exhibitions featured teenage artwork this summer: "The Teen Experience," currently running at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in Washington, D.C., and displays at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which focused on the theme "Youth and the Future of Culture." In both venues, young artists were encouraged to create authentic portrayals of their lives and the challenges they face, but they discovered that certain aspects of their reality made adults uncomfortable.
The Museum of Contemporary American Teenagers (MoCAT), an organization without a physical space that works with artists throughout Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, connected these two events. The teenage artists used various mediums including paintings, drawings, mixed media, and life-size installations to depict a wide range of subjects that define their generation's experience: self-doubt, school lockdowns, protests, living through a pandemic, and everyday milestones like learning to drive.
One of the most powerful pieces in "The Teen Experience" exhibition is a life-size classroom installation created by Alexander Weiss, Mia Melton, and Lois Proeller. The installation features a loudspeaker that continuously plays a chilling announcement: "Lockdown, lockdown. This is an emergency alert." According to Weiss, the goal was to help viewers understand the "looming fear" of school shootings that students carry with them every single day.
Another striking work is "Falling" by artist Betty Shanefelter, which captures the emotional turbulence of teenage life. Léda Pelton contributed a piece titled "What I will pack when I run away from home," offering a glimpse into the complex feelings of escape and independence that many teenagers experience.
David Lopilato, a Maryland high school teacher who founded MoCAT, explained his motivation for creating the organization: "So many of our cultural moments were kind of set by teenagers and yet we kind of systematically ignore them." Mygenet Tesfaye Harris, a Maryland art educator and one of the show's co-curators, emphasized that art serves as "a safe place for our students to be themselves, to be authentic."
The situation at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival proved to be both inspiring and deeply disappointing for the young artists involved. High school students created artwork in real time on the National Mall, with their space including an interactive installation of a school bathroom where visitors could write on the stalls. The centerpiece was a collaborative mural that addressed various issues affecting teenagers today.
Seventeen-year-old artist Flair Doherty, who grew up visiting Smithsonian museums, initially described the opportunity to work with the Folklife Festival as "the coolest thing ever." She was one of four artists who worked on the mural, which depicted "the stresses of college acceptance to protests to dealing with the coronavirus pandemic to self-image."
The mural included depictions of protesters holding signs with messages such as "The climate is changing, why aren't we?" "No human is illegal," "Protect kids, not guns," and "Free Palestine." These messages reflected the political and social issues that matter most to today's teenagers.
Mary Beth Tinker, a legendary free speech advocate, was impressed when she encountered the mural while visiting the festival to speak about free speech rights. Tinker has a remarkable history with student expression rights – as an eighth-grader in Iowa in 1965, she and other students were suspended for wearing black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. This incident led to the landmark Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines, in which the majority ruled that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
Tinker encouraged the student artists, telling them she "encouraged the students because they were making this beautiful mural about issues that they cared about. One of the issues featured was Free Palestine. And that's an issue that I care about." She often tells students, "You always can be proud of speaking up about the things that you really believe in because that's a life of integrity."
However, Smithsonian officials had a very different reaction to the teenagers' artistic expression. According to Flair Doherty, a Smithsonian staff member approached her and the other teen artists, claiming that the "Free Palestine" slogan was "antisemitic and hateful." Doherty, who is Jewish herself, disagreed with this characterization. She recalled, "We talked for maybe three minutes and did not really get anywhere."
The situation escalated quickly from there. Eighteen-year-old artist Léda Pelton described what happened next: "We went over the next day and it was completely covered in tarps." Pelton hadn't even finished her section of the mural, which focused on cars and college acceptance. According to Pelton, Smithsonian officials justified their decision by saying they were "afraid that somebody was going to walk by and see 'Free Palestine' on our mural and get mad and hurt us." Pelton's response highlighted the problematic nature of this reasoning: "And I'm like, 'maybe we are not the problem in that situation.'"
Pelton further expressed her frustration with the situation: "I don't understand why we are the ones who have to change our behavior because somebody else decided that they were too angry to just walk by something that they didn't agree with."
When Mary Beth Tinker learned about the censorship of the mural, she strongly condemned the decision in a video she posted on social media, drawing parallels to her own experiences with institutional suppression of student speech.
MoCAT founder David Lopilato found himself in a difficult position, describing feeling "conflicted" about the situation. At one point, he even asked the students if they would be willing to paint over the protest signs, explaining, "I was trying to figure out a solution. Is a solution to go one step back, cover the part that became an issue, and then everyone at the festival could see the mural versus not see it at all."
Clifford Murphy, director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, provided the institution's official explanation for covering the mural: "The Smithsonian doesn't promote or endorse individual political statements. And so, because the Smithsonian has ultimate authority and responsibility for its content, we decided to cover the mural."
Murphy claimed that MoCAT would have received guidance "about not promoting and endorsing individual political statements" at the festival. However, when Lopilato shared correspondence with NPR, the letter from the Smithsonian addressing these restrictions was dated July 4, two days after the festival had already begun. The teen artists told NPR they had no recollection of being informed in advance that certain language would be considered off-limits.
Murphy insisted that the decision was not influenced by political pressure or the White House executive order that claimed the Smithsonian had "come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology." However, Mary Beth Tinker couldn't help but see connections to broader censorship trends. "The issue of Palestine is one of the most censored issues right now in schools and really in the country, along with LGBTQ issues and also race and racism," she observed.
Despite her criticism of this particular incident, Tinker emphasized that she remains "a longtime fan of the Smithsonian and its Folklife Festival" and doesn't want to see them "harmed in any way." However, she believes people should pay closer attention to what teenagers have to say: "There's no wonder that all through history, young people have been in the lead for speaking up for a better way and a better world."
The teen artists involved in creating the mural are now hoping to retrieve their work and complete it properly. Both Léda Pelton and Flair Doherty want to recover the mural, which is currently in storage at the Smithsonian. Pelton hopes that she and the other artists can finish the mural and display it "fully realized as a completed artwork." Doherty echoed this sentiment, adding, "There are a lot of spaces where teenagers are talked about in culture and very few spaces where teenagers can actually express themselves."
Regarding the future of the mural, Murphy explained that it technically belongs to the Folklife Festival. "Since we're not a collecting unit of the Smithsonian, we tend to repurpose this kind of thing as materials rather than just fully dispose of them," he said. However, he indicated openness to "discussing other options" for the artwork's future.
This incident highlights the ongoing tension between institutional comfort and authentic youth expression, raising important questions about who gets to decide which aspects of teenage life are acceptable for public display and which are deemed too controversial for adult audiences.
