The Library of Congress decided against showcasing a large photograph of the inaugural Women’s March in Washington, D.C., over concerns that it could be perceived as critical of President Trump.
The 14-by-10-foot photograph was slated to appear as a prominent display in the “Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote” exhibit celebrating the centennial of women’s right to vote, according to emails obtained by the Washington Post.
The exhibit opened June 4 with that photograph being replaced by an image of eight people demonstrating during the Women’s March in Houston.
The change was made last-minute, and Kevin Carroll, the photographer who captured the original photograph, was credited in the brochure instead of the photographer of the replacement image.
Library of Congress spokeswoman April Slayton said the original image had “vulgar language and political content [that] was not appropriate for the Library’s exhibit.” She said profane language was clearly visible on one of the signs and would have been easy for children to see.
The exhibition team instead decided to use a photograph from the Women’s March in Houston that “represents the contemporary women’s movement without the vulgar language included in the original image,” Slayton said.
In a May 29 email to Carroll, the library’s senior exhibition director, Betsy Nahum-Miller, wrote that the photograph “has some other features that we know will be a problem politically and therefore need to be replaced. There were a couple of anti-Trump messages that appear very clearly in the image.”
It’s the second instance of a federal institution preventing images it determined to be critical of Trump from being displayed.
The National Archives apologized two weeks ago for altering a large photograph of the Women’s March, which took place the day after Trump was inaugurated.
The photograph blurred the word “Trump” from signs that said, “God Hates Trump” and “Trump & GOP — Hands Off Women.” Signs that referenced female anatomy were also altered.
“As a nonpartisan, nonpolitical federal agency, we blurred references to the president’s name on some posters, so as not to engage in current political controversy,” Archives spokeswoman Miriam Kleiman said.
