Following a Monday, February 16, morning protest march on the University of North Texas (UNT) campus, a dozen students in the College of Visual Art & Design (CVAD) staged a sit-in in the union building during a Board of Regents meeting on Thursday, February 19.
The ongoing protests are over the sudden and unexplained cancellation of the Victor “MARKA27” Quiñonez exhibition, Ni de Aqui, Ni de Allá, in the school’s main art gallery. The show, which included clear acrylic and resin large-scale, melting paleta sculptures with embedded handcuffs and guns, was fully installed and opened to the public on Tuesday, February 3. Within days, students noticed that the gallery windows were papered over and the gallery doors locked, and contacted the artist, who had not been notified that his show and concurrent events had been canceled until receiving an email from Stefanie Dlugosz-Acton, CVAD Galleries Curator and Director, on Friday, February 11. The email offered no reason for the closure of the show, which was scheduled to run through Sunday, May 1.
UNT leadership has offered no public explanation for the cancellation, despite stated requests from multiple news outlets, including North Texas Daily, ARTnews, Hyperallergic, CBS News, and The New York Times.
On Thursday, a student protest march, termed an “Art Walk” on notices disseminated via social media, took place from Noon to 2 p.m. Social media posts from the event indicate that 50 students engaged in the march. The event was described as, “A peaceful celebration of the freedom for young artists to express themselves amid tumultuous times,” and encouraged participants to bring artworks to show UNT leadership. The student sit-in followed the march, with between 10 to 15 students present at various times throughout the Board of Regents meeting…