In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the paintings of Philip Guston suddenly gained unprecedented power. The spotlight fell on his hooded figures — Ku Klux Klansmen — in paintings he made in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Tate Modern’s partnering institutions in the US particularly seem to have got cold feet with the original incarnation of the show, feeling that there was insufficient context for those paintings. Instead, they argued that they needed to “bring in additional perspectives and voices to shape how we present Guston’s work to our public”, and postponed it.
In the versions of this exhibition shown in Boston, Washington and Houston, there have been varying levels of additional perspectives and mechanisms to prevent the potential trauma for visitors seeing white supremacy depicted.
