As political forces increasingly tighten their grip on cultural institutions, Defending Ethical Integrity: The New Degenerate Art emerges as both a rebellion and a celebration of fearless self-expression. This exhibition confronts authoritarian narratives, censorship, and the suppression of creative autonomy, asserting art’s essential role in ethical resistance and social critique.
Evoking the legacy of the Nazi Party’s 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition—an effort to vilify and silence artists—this exhibition reclaims the term “degenerate” as a symbol of defiance and integrity. The exhibition includes Elana Mann and the collective AMBOS, both of whom experienced suppression firsthand when their works were turned off or altered by Pepperdine University administrators, who deemed them “political” and inconsistent with the institution’s policies.
Defending Ethical Integrity amplifies such voices, featuring a diverse group of contemporary artists who challenge entrenched power structures, disrupt social taboos, and refuse to conform to forces that would limit artistic freedom.
My series of photographs of Native Americans (pictured above) grew out of my SARF residency at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum. My project sought to identify and photograph plaster bust of Native Americans that were once used in museum and educational displays. These busts speak to the historical construction of race in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as the role of museum’s in shaping racial bias nearly a century ago. These objects were often created as part of educational displays on human difference, typically positioning the white race as superior.
In doing this work, I was able to correct several historical errors and misidentifications, and to share these objects with Native communities. In the case of Shonke Mon Th^, we were able to have this important historical figure acknowledged, and ultimately, included in the National Portrait Gallery collection of important Americans. Ironically, the exhibition was closed during Trump’s first presidency due to the 2019 Government shut-down and then in 2025, the museum’s director, Kate Sajet, was “fired” by Trump in 2025 post on his social media platform.
The underlying critique of racial bias in museum displays is a reflection of what the current administration has called “woke ideologies.” Which, for many, is not unlike the use of the term“degenerate” in the 1930s to categorize progressive art practices at that time. Many of which sought to critique false notions of racial purity, and racist hierarchies, which saw LGBTQ+ and communities of color as “primitive” “degenerate” or criminal.
By bringing attention to objects that were used to support white supremacy, the project has sought to change the discourse by acknowledging the ways that historical ideas of around race continue to shape our understanding of contested objects, and most importantly, it is also a way of honoring the individuals and communities depicted.
