The US Embassy in the Dominican Republic is changing its artwork to reflect “American patriotism and the beauty of our great country,” US ambassador Leah Campos wrote in an Instagram post on August 11, that showed Kehinde Wiley’s Young Artists After Siamesas 1960 (2013) being swapped for an image of the American flag. The post was accompanied by the song “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister.
On Monday, the New York Times reported that the State Department wants to sell the painting. Campos said in her Instagram post that the “Trump Administration and under my leadership we are turning away from globalist and woke ideologies.”
The 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’s official portrait, spent two years studying the works of Dominican artists Celeste Woss y Gil and Gilberto Hernández Ortega before finishing the piece. “We worked very hard to get [it] taken down. It was very woke. It was by the gentleman who did Obama’s portrait and it was aesthetically terrifying,” said Erin Scavino, director of Art in Embassies in a podcast interview with Sean Spicer.
