Today, the Whitney Museum of American Art announced the 75 artists (listed below) who will contribute work to the 2019 Whitney Biennial, curated by Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta and opening May 17. But one artist who was slated to appear, Michael Rakowitz, has withdrawn from the event.

The highly anticipated exhibition of contemporary art has been entangled in political disputes in the past, perhaps this year more than ever. Recent controversy sparked after news resurfaced identifying a Whitney vice chairman, Warren Kanders, as the owner and CEO of Safariland, a multi-billion dollar weapons manufacturer. (Forbes estimates that Kanders himself is worth $700 million.) Safariland products, particularly tear gas, have been used at highly-reported political clashes, including at Standing Rock, Baltimore, Ferguson, Gaza, and recently, at the US–Mexico border to prevent Central American asylum-seekers from entering the United States.

In the past, the Biennial has been a political stomping ground for artists, and simultaneously artists and activists in disagreement with curatorial and artistic decisions. The 2017 biennial became the focus of numerous protests opposing a painting by Dana Schutz depicting Emmett Till, a Black 14-year-old brutally murdered in 1955 over false accusations that he whistled at a white woman. In 2014, Joe Scanlan’s Donelle Woolford artwork prompted the Yams Collective to withdraw their participation. 

Today, the New York Times reported that, troubled by Kanders’s role at the Whitney, artist Michael Rakowitz has withdrawn his participation. Rakowitz had been commissioned to recreate artifacts and locations destroyed in the Iraq war.