When police removed four photographs by Sally Mann from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in early January, Marshall K. Harris, a former NFL player-turned-local artist, wasn’t surprised. Local politics had been shifting to the right recently, especially since the election of conservative firebrand Tim O’Hare as Tarrant County judge in 2022. Furthermore, a nationwide cultural shift toward right-wing censorship, evident in activist book-banning efforts across Texas in the past few years, had been further invigorated since the reelection of President Donald Trump in November.
Harris wasn’t shocked either, when the photos—much-lauded and long-controversial 1980s pictures of Mann’s young children nude—were held as evidence for more than three months in what may be the most significant police investigation of a museum art show in the United States since 1990.
Instead, what amazed Harris was the silence that predominated across the Fort Worth art scene surrounding the matter.
