Artist accuses UNC gallery of 'censoring' his work by omitting photos of student demonstrators, UNC board members

Controversy is swirling over a photo exhibition at a gallery on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's campus that was canceled.

Posted 10:44 p.m. Feb 25, 2022 — Updated 10:44 p.m. Feb 25, 2022

Adam Owens

, WRAL reporter

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Controversy is swirling over a photo exhibit at a gallery on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's campus that was canceled.

The photo exhibit at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture & History was meant to focus on places important to the Black community. Artist Cornell Watson said his work was censored, and he published it through the Washington Post instead.

Watson said he wanted to "point my lens on the Black community of Chapel Hill and the Black legacy."

But Joseph Jordan, the director of Stone Center's gallery, said he didn't agree with some of the images Watson included in the exhibit called "Tarred Healing" — particularly photos of student demonstrators and a photo taken of Clayton Somers, vice chancellor for public affairs and secretary of the university, during the Board of Trustees meeting to make a tenure decision for Nikole Hannah-Jones.

"Some of these [photos], at least in our estimation, are not reflective of the tone and subject matter we wanted to focus on," Jordan said.

Watson claims by omitting the three photos, his exhibit was being "censored." However, Jordan defended his gallery's decision on Friday, saying the intention was never to "censor" Watson's work.

"How is it censorship when we are working with you to build an exhibition, and this is what we see as not part of the exhibition [theme]?" Jordan said.

He said he would have been open to using the photos of student protests and of the UNC board member in a different exhibit and claims that the photos distracted from the atmosphere of reverence he hoped to create. The theme of the exhibit was supposed to focus on Black Americans connecting to their ancestors, Jordan said.

But Watson maintains that the three photos that Jordan wanted to omit were key to the installation.

"I am not here to sugar coat stuff," Watson said. "Are we here to tell the unapologetic truth or not?"

Before the exhibition was set to go live, Watson shared the full photo story with the Washington Post. He wanted to make sure that his exhibition included the three photos that the university wanted to leave out. After that, UNC decided to cancel his art exhibition.

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