Red Dot Miami Rejects Anti-Trump Artwork Ahead of Art Basel Week

The Red Dot art fair in Miami has withdrawn permission for artists David Gleeson and Mary Mihelic, working as t.Rutt, to exhibit their anti-Trump bus artwork during the upcoming art week coinciding with Art Basel Miami Beach. The artists had purchased a former Trump campaign bus, repurposed it with satirical slogans such as "Make fruit punch great again" and "I did try and fuck her," and planned to display it in the fair's parking lot. However, the day after the 2016 US presidential election, fair organizers emailed the artists to cancel the exhibition, stating the work was "unnecessarily offensive" and not aligned with the fair's goals. The fair denied this was censorship. The artists responded on Twitter with the motto "Obey the Black Swan," a reference to Donald Trump. The incident follows a recent open letter from Volta fairs in Basel and New York distancing themselves from hate speech without explicitly opposing Trump, while Hyperallergic's Carey Dunne reported this as an early sign of a pro-Trump shift in the art world.