[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-917389214.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe US Embassy in the Dominican Republic is changing its artwork to reflect \u201cAmerican patriotism and the beauty of our great country,\u201d US ambassador Leah Campos wrote in an Instagram post on August 11, that showed Kehinde Wiley\u2019s Young Artists After Siamesas 1960<\/em> (2013) being swapped for an image of the American flag. The post was accompanied by the song \u201cWe\u2019re Not Gonna Take It\u201d by Twisted Sister.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOn Monday, the New York Times<\/em> reported that the State Department wants to sell the painting. Campos said in her Instagram post that the \u201cTrump Administration and under my leadership we are turning away from globalist and woke ideologies.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe Wiley painting, which was commissioned by the State Department in 2013, features four Dominican models, two men sitting and two women standing against a blue floral backdrop. The artist, who also painted President Barack Obama\u2019s official portrait, spent two years studying the works of Dominican artists Celeste Woss y Gil and Gilberto Hern\u00e1ndez Ortega before finishing the piece. \u201cWe worked very hard to get [it] taken down. It was very woke. It was by the gentleman who did Obama\u2019s portrait and it was aesthetically terrifying,\u201d said Erin Scavino, director of Art in Embassies in a podcast interview with Sean Spicer.<\/p>\n \n\tA spokeswoman told the Times<\/em> that \u201cthe work of an individual with such violent and racist words and depictions has no place in the America First State Department,\u201d referring to a comment that Wiley had made about a painting depicting the biblical scene of Judith beheading Holofernes, which he characterized as a \u201cplay on the \u2018kill whitey\u2019 thing\u201d in a 2023 interview. The Times<\/em> reported that the spokesperson\u2019s statement also cites sexual assault lawsuit filed against Wiley in February 2025 as part of its reasoning; Wiley has denied the allegations in that suit.<\/p>\n \n\tA request for comment sent to Wiley via his New York gallery Sean Kelly was not immediately returned.<\/p>\n \n\tThe spokeswoman added that the State Department is investigating whether it can legally sell the painting. \u201cIf that is feasible, it would be the goal of Art in Embassies to proudly do so,\u201d said the spokeswoman.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cCalling this woke is difficult for me to understand,\u201d adviser Virginia Shore, who served as director of acquisitions and chief curator for the Art in Embassies program between 2000 and 2017 and now serves as Curator of commissions for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, told the Times<\/em>. \u201dThis is a program validated and financially backed under Bush. There is a science of building trust and empathy across borders.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/trump-administration-weighs-sale-kehinde-wiley-painting-1234795673\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-917389214.jpg?w=1024″] The US Embassy in the Dominican Republic is changing its artwork to reflect \u201cAmerican patriotism and the beauty of our great country,\u201d US ambassador Leah Campos wrote in an Instagram post on August 11, that showed Kehinde Wiley\u2019s Young Artists After Siamesas 1960 (2013) being swapped for an image of the American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2113427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2113427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2113427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2113427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2113427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}