Whitney Pauses Independent Study Program
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, is suspending the 2025–26 iteration of its esteemed Independent Study Program (ISP). The museum said that it expects to bring the program back for the 2026–27 academic year. Founded in 1968 and absorbed into the Whitney in the 1980s, the ISP has gained a reputation as an incubator for top curatorial, critical, and artistic talent, counting among its alumni such luminaries as artists LaToya Ruby Frazier, Glenn Ligon, and Rirkrit Tiravanija; critics Huey Copeland and Roberta Smith; and curators Carlos Basualdo and Sheena Wagstaff.
The suspension of the program comes after the museum’s cancellation last month of a performance about Palestinian mourning that was set to be presented as part of the 2024–25 ISP class’s capstone exhibitions. The Whitney put paid to the May 14 performance by artists Fadl Fakhouri, Noel Maghathe, and Fargo Tbakhi of No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance after leadership reviewed a 2024 video of the piece in which Tbakhi introduced the work by urging those who believe in Israel or America “in any incarnation,” as well as those who “would like to encourage people to vote” and those who felt it was “important” that the artists “condemn violence,” to leave. The museum in a statement said that it had terminated the event because Tbakhi’s introduction, which it cast as additionally valorizing “specific acts of violence and imagery of violence,” conflicted with its “zero-tolerance” policy for harassment or discriminatory behavior. The Whitney said there was “no instance when we would find it acceptable to single out members of our community based on their belief system and ask them to leave an exhibition or performance.”
The museum’s cancellation of the performance was met with dismay from the participating artists, and from ISP students Bea Ortega Botas, Kennedy Hollins Jones, Tamara Khasanova, and Ntshadi Mofokeng, who had curated the exhibition in which it was to appear, with Fakhouri, Maghathe, and Tbakhi telling Hyperallergic they stood by the original introduction and the curators issuing a statement, reprinted in Artnews, avowing their support for the artists. The cancellation also spurred protests from ISP students, some of whom withdrew from the capstone exhibitions, and from the National Coalition Against Censorship, which said that the cancellation “cement[ed] the perception that artists who want to address contested political topics may only do so in unprovocative, anodyne ways.”
ISP associate director Sara Nadal-Melsió had argued that the introduction was not part of the performance and was not set to be repeated ahead of the ISP presentation of the work. The Whitney has now said that her position “will not be maintained” while the ISP is suspended. Nadal-Melsió inaugurated the role of associate director just last year, after artist and writer Gregg Bordowitz, who had been hired in 2023 to lead the program following the retirement of founding director Ron Clark, was reassigned as director-at-large.
Whitney director Scott Rothkopf on June 2 wrote to staffers, “After much consideration with colleagues and with a deep sense of responsibility to the program’s legacy and future, we have made the difficult decision to pause the ISP for the 2025–2026 academic year as we search for a new Director to lead the program forward.” Rothkopf affirmed the Whitney’s commitment to the ISP but said that “greater reflection” regarding the program’s circumstances and future was “necessary.”
Shortly after Rothkopf’s decision was made public, over three hundred ISP alumni signed an open letter in support of the students “who were censored when presenting work in solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian freedom.”
