Corporate Censorship

Abstract

A chapter in a book about censorship in the global contemporary art world edited by Roisin Kennedy, University College Dublin, and Rhiann Coulter, Trinity College Dublin, (to be) published by IB Tauris in 2018, this book was the product of a panel at the Association of Art Historians annual conference. The chapter focuses solely on London so as to avoid potentially misleading and generalised statements about the censorship and contemporary art more globally. London serves as a case study of the specific pressures under which artists practice under neoliberalism and the often-unconscious internalisation of neoliberal values by contemporary artists, including socially-engaged practitioners. The article defines censorship, distinguishing it from the ordinary operations of the art world to include and exclude, and also distinguishing it from the ordinary operations of markets, which reduce diversity in order to rationalise. Both of these have been confused with instances of censorship.