Kehinde Wiley Painting Removed From US Embassy in Santo Domingo

The State Department has taken Kehinde Wiley’s Young Artists After Siamesas 1960 off the wall of the United States embassy in Santo Domingo and says it is looking into whether the painting can lawfully be sold. The Art in Embassies commission began around 2013 and the painting was completed in 2015 — the same State Department program that honored Wiley that year for his contributions to cultural diplomacy, in a citation the department still publishes.

What Came Off the Wall in Santo Domingo

The removal was first reported by Zachary Small in the New York Times on 24 August 2026. The Times placed the removal in the week before it published; no statement from the department or the embassy has fixed the day.

According to that report, embassy staff first covered the painting with a tarpaulin printed with the American flag before it was taken down. Erin Scavino, the director of Art in Embassies, criticized the work on a podcast. Leah Campos, the United States ambassador to the Dominican Republic, marked the removal on social media with a video set to “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” writing that the embassy is “leaving behind globalist, ‘woke’ ideologies to embrace, instead, American patriotism and the beauty of our great country.” A departmental statement said: “The work of an individual with such violent and racist words and depictions has no place in the America First State Department.”

Those are characterizations by named officials, not findings. What is documentary is narrower and more interesting: a federal art program commissioned a painting, installed it in a diplomatic building, honored the artist for exactly that kind of work, and has now removed it and raised the possibility of sale. Neither Wiley nor his gallerist Sean Kelly responded to requests for comment, Artlyst reported.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a meet-and-greet with U.S. Embassy Santo Domingo staff, 6 February 2025. Photo: Freddie Everett / U.S. Department of State, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

 

Secretary of State John Kerry with the recipients of the 2015 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts, including Kehinde Wiley, Washington, D.C., 21 January 2015. Photo: U.S. Department of State, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain (licence), cropped.

A Teacher, Her Student, and the Students Wiley Painted

The painting shows four young Dominicans, arranged in poses borrowed from two canonical works of Dominican modernism: a nude by Celeste Woss y Gil and Siamesas (1960) by Gilberto Hernández Ortega. Wiley made it after working with students from the Facultad de Artes in Santo Domingo and the Altos de Chavón School of Design in La Romana.

Those two names are not a random pairing of local celebrities. Woss y Gil (Santo Domingo, 1891–1985) ran her own painting academy in the capital before joining the country’s new national art school. La Biennale di Venezia, which showed her in 2024, describes her as “a modern woman artist and feminist paradigm in Dominican painting” and “a master” of portraiture and the nude.

Hernández Ortega (Baní, 1923 – Santo Domingo, 1979) was her pupil. La Biennale’s own participant record names Woss y Gil as his mentor in painting, notes that he was among the first to enroll at the National School of Fine Arts after it was established in 1942, and calls him “a multigenerational teacher of Dominican artists.”

The composition therefore brings a documented Dominican teacher-student relationship into dialogue with a later generation of Dominican art students whom Wiley painted from life. It connects Woss y Gil and Hernández Ortega’s place in the country’s art history with young artists studying there decades later without implying that the sitters themselves belonged to the same direct teaching lineage.

The method is standard Wiley: he casts sitters he meets, then poses them inside a borrowed historical composition, and the tension between the two is the subject. Readers who want the longer view of that practice can start with our surveys of Kehinde Wiley and his major paintings.

One detail remains unresolved. Art in Embassies’ own Santo Domingo publication identifies Woss y Gil’s source as Desnudo Feminine (1940). Other documented Woss y Gil nudes include a Desnudo I of 1941 held by the Museo de Arte Moderno in Santo Domingo and the Desnudo of 1948 lent by Museo Bellapart to La Biennale di Venezia in 2024. The exact Woss y Gil object Wiley used as his source therefore still needs to be identified independently.

The Medal the Same Department Gave Him

On 21 January 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry presented the second State Department Medal of Arts in the Benjamin Franklin Room to seven artists: Xu Bing, Mark Bradford, Sam Gilliam, Maya Lin, Julie Mehretu, Pedro Reyes and Kehinde Wiley. Wiley’s citation on the department’s own site reads: “for his longtime contributions to Art in Embassies and cultural diplomacy.”

That page is still live today, and it still describes the commission at issue in the present tense — Wiley, it says, “is currently working on multiple projects, including a monumental painting for the new U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, commissioned by Art in Embassies.” The department’s page for the ceremony itself quotes the then Art in Embassies director, Ellen Susman, telling the room that the recipients’ art “will forever grace the walls of our embassies around the world.”

The department’s documentary record of the commission has thinned since. Its dedicated page announcing the Santo Domingo painting now returns a 404; the Internet Archive’s availability record shows the same URL returning a working page as recently as 8 December 2025. Its Santo Domingo permanent collection page is marked “PERMANENT” and displays works by fifteen artists, among them Firelei Báez, Hulda Guzmán, Amaya Salazar and Raul Recio; Wiley appears on it only under “Partners,” with no work shown.

The Painting Behind the Statement Is From 2012

Artlyst’s account has the department’s statement invoking remarks Wiley made in 2023 about his painting Judith and Holofernes, and referring to sexual assault allegations the artist has denied.

The 2023 date belongs to the remarks, not to the canvas. The North Carolina Museum of Art, which owns it, catalogues it as oil on linen, 2012, and acquired it that same year under accession number 2012.6. It belongs to An Economy of Grace, Wiley’s first series of female sitters.

Four men publicly accused Wiley of sexual misconduct in 2024. In February 2025, Josephine Chieke filed a civil lawsuit under New York’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law. Wiley has denied the allegations — “There is no truth to Ms. Chieke’s allegations. I’ve never met her, nor do I know her,” he told The Art Newspaper in April 2025. In January 2026, a New York court denied a motion to dismiss Chieke’s claim, allowing the civil case to proceed; that procedural ruling did not determine whether the allegation itself is true. Three American museums shelved or postponed Wiley exhibitions in 2024.

What Has Not Been Said About a Sale

Art in Embassies was envisioned by the Museum of Modern Art in 1953 and formalized at the State Department by President Kennedy in 1963. It now spans more than 200 diplomatic venues in 189 countries and says it has installed more than 100 permanent art collections since 2000. Removing a work from a wall and disposing of it are separate acts, and only the first has happened.

On the second, the department has said only that it is examining whether a sale would be lawful. No sale has been authorized. The department has not publicly announced a buyer, an appraisal or valuation, an auction arrangement, the legal authority it would use for a disposal, or where any proceeds would go. It has also not publicly said where the painting is now being stored.

Because the painting was acquired for a federal permanent collection, any disposal would depend on the federal property, acquisition and program rules that apply to it. The State Department has not publicly identified the legal authority it believes would permit a sale. Our explainer on how art commissions work covers the general shape of the relationship between a commissioning body and an artist.

A Decorated Commission, a Dominican Lineage, and a Misdated Remark

• The two Dominican works Wiley quoted connect a documented teacher and pupil: La Biennale di Venezia’s 2024 participant record names Celeste Woss y Gil as Gilberto Hernández Ortega’s mentor in painting. Wiley’s use of contemporary Dominican art students places that historical relationship in dialogue with a later generation rather than establishing a direct three-generation teaching line.
• The State Department awarded Wiley its Medal of Art on 21 January 2015 “for his longtime contributions to Art in Embassies and cultural diplomacy” — a citation the department still publishes, on a page that still describes the Santo Domingo commission as work in progress.
• The department’s dedicated page for that commission now returns a 404, while the Internet Archive records the same URL working on 8 December 2025. The department’s Santo Domingo permanent collection page lists fifteen artists with works and places Wiley only among “Partners.”
• Judith and Holofernes, the painting behind the remarks the statement invokes, was made in 2012 and bought by the North Carolina Museum of Art that year under accession number 2012.6; the words the department quotes were spoken in 2023, eleven years later.

Isabella Meyer( Head of Content, Editor, Art Writer )

Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly.

Her focal points of interest in art history encompass profiling specific artists and art movements, as it is these areas where she is able to really dig deep into the rich narrative of the art world. Additionally, she particularly enjoys exploring the different artistic styles of the 20^th century, as well as the important impact that female artists have had on the development of art history.

Learn more about Isabella Meyer and the Art in Context Team.