Visual artist Dread Scott, playwright Lynn Nottage, and dozens of cultural figures have launched "Fall of Freedom," a nationwide weekend of creative demonstrations scheduled for November 21–22. The project invites America's arts community to organize independent actions—such as storefront readings, pop-up performances, exhibitions, and workshops—at museums, galleries, classrooms, comedy clubs, or any community gathering space, united by a shared stance against rising authoritarianism under the Trump administration. Participating institutions include the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, which will host a "Wear Your Rights" silk-screening workshop, and New York's Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, which will turn a gallery into a library on queer art activism. Other notable participants include artists Marilyn Minter, Robert Longo, Amy Sherald, and curator Laura Raicovich.
This initiative matters because it represents a direct, organized response from the visual arts community to what organizers describe as escalating threats to free expression, including the Trump administration's interventions at the Smithsonian and Kennedy Center, and the cancellation of Amy Sherald's exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery due to political pressure. By framing creative resistance as a nationwide "wave" and providing loose, inclusive guidelines, "Fall of Freedom" aims to mobilize artists and cultural institutions as active defenders of democratic values and against censorship, signaling a significant moment of political engagement in the art world.