Students at the Rhode Island School of Design have accused administration of censorship after an exhibition of dissident art, some of which explicitly criticized Israel’s occupation of Palestine, was removed from public view by campus security only four days into its run.
The show, titled “To Every Orange Tree,” opened on March 17 in the publicly accessible campus café gallery and featured works by more than 70 RISD students and staff, as well as members of the local community. The show centered around anti-imperialist and liberation movements around the world.
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According to a spokesperson for RISD Students for Justice in Palestine (RSJP), who spoke to ARTnews on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from the university or ICE, the controversy began on Thursday, March 20, after images of the exhibition were uploaded by the X account StopAntisemitism.
That account accused the show of “promoting violence against Jews and calling for the removal of Israel.” StopAntisemitism has previously made similar claims about Palestinian artist Jumana Manna and curator Eungie Joo, who was fired from her post at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art months afterward.
On March 21, RISD’s administration ordered RISD Public Safety officers to close the building. RSJP, the show’s host, or its creative team, Members of RSJP, said it was not consulted in advance.
RSJP told ARTnews that public safety officers, joined by an Equity and Compliance staff member, inventoried each artwork with photographs, without disclosing the reasons for which the show was closed. RSJP said it was asked by administration on Tuesday to remove the artworks from the cafe by 4:30 p.m. today. Otherwise, the show would be deinstalled by the RISD exhibitions director.
“How are students supposed to build the skills to curate an exhibition, or to be exhibited, if the artwork is put in a building that cannot be accessed by anyone outside of the RISD community, and anyone who sees it will be monitored? No one can remember another time like this when public safety came to a show,” the RSJP spokesperson told ARTnews.
The Trump administration has dramatically expanded its influence on college campuses in recent week in an attempt to suppress anti-Zionist demonstrations. On Tuesday, US immigration arrested and revoked the student visa of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University PhD candidate and Turkish national who voiced support for Palestine. Her arrest is the latest in a string of incidents targeting international students that has exacerbated tensions on RISD’s campus, according to the RSJP spokesperson.
On March 25, the RISD Center for Student Involvement emailed RSJP an offer to relocate the show to the third floor of an office protestors have called Fathi Ghaben Place (20 Washington Place), which is located farther from the campus center and which has never hosted an art exhibition. Last May, students barricaded themselves inside the building—after dedicating it to the famed Palestinian painter who died in 2024 following unsuccessful appeals for a medical evacuation from Gaza— amid a rising wave of pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses across the United States.
The RISD student encampment called on the school to be more transparent about its investment portfolio, to commit to divesting from Israel, and to establish a student oversight committee regarding future investments. The protestors also called on the president and board to “publicly condemn the Israeli occupation of Gaza as a genocide.”
The encampment disbanded shortly before leadership threatened participants with expulsion if they did not vacate the premises. This January, RISD’s board of trustees voted to reject the students’ demand to divest its $396 million endowment from companies linked to Israel. A statement from the school shared with the RISD community and posted to the school’s website stated that RSJP’s proposal did not meet the criteria established in its Statement on Divestment, which says it is the board’s sole discretion to “take political and social considerations into account” when making such financial decisions.
Staff told the group in the email that the proposed relocation to Fathi Ghaben Place was meant to limit “public accessibility,” as the school had “safety concerns” about the artwork on display. “These actions were necessary to manage the safety of the campus, as a community, and to safeguard specific individuals and their works of art, insofar as RISD can maintain control over its own campus,” the email reads.
ARTnews has queried RISD administration for comment. The story will be updated.
Unlike Carr House, the office building is accessible only by an RISD ID card. The administration added in the email that its Center for Student Involvement “worked with [the curators] to ensure the show could open on March 17, even though some individuals expressed their dissatisfaction and disagreement with [their] plans to the school’s administration in advance of the opening.”
RISD SJP contends that there was no communication between administration and its members or collaborators about safety when the show began organizing in February. According to the spokesperson, per university protocol, a request to host the show was even filed with the Center for Student Involvement. Though the name of the show was not decided at that time, the initial advertisement made explicit that it contained anti-colonial, pro-Palestine themes.
“It’s ironic that RISD purports itself to be this progressive institution that values the material practices of artists when they are literally refusing to engage with the wider world,” the RSJP spokesperson said, adding: “How can we be proud of a degree from an institution that excludes Palestinian artists and designers from its narrative?”