Every two years, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City holds its Biennial, an invitational exhibition of new work. In 2014, the museum invited three guest curators—Anthony Elms (Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia), Michelle Grabner (artist and Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago), and Stuart Comer (Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at MoMA)—to each oversee one floor of the exhibition from their varied perspectives and methodologies. Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs at the Whitney, Donna De Salvo, touted the exhibition’s offerings as “one of the broadest and most diverse takes on art in the United States that the Whitney has offered in many years,” however, of the 103 invited participants, just nine were black. Of those nine artists, one, Donelle Woolford, a thirty-seven year-old woman from Conyers Georgia, was actually the fabrication of a white man, artist Joe Scanlan. This brought the total number of black female artists in the Biennial down to one.

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

                                                                                             

                                                                                             Joe Scanlan

 

Joe Scanlan, who at the time of the Biennial was a professor and the director of the visual arts program at Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts, conceived of the persona of Donelle Woolford in 2001 along with the fictional character Steve “Canal” Jones, a working-class white man from Niagara Falls working in what Scanlan dubbed “hillbilly cubism.” After creating a number of collages, Scanlan concluded that he “liked them but they seemed like they would be more interesting if someone else made them, someone who could better exploit their historical and cultural references.” In 2004, Scanlan began focusing primarily on the Woolford character, and in 2005, he hired an actress to play her for the first time. Five actresses have since played Woolford, sometimes independently and sometimes simultaneously. Two of the most prolific have been New York-based actress Abigail Ramsay and Philadelphia-based actress Jennifer Kidwell who both participated in the Whitney Biennial.

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

​

                                                       Abigail Ramsay                                     Jennifer Kidwell

 

The Whitney made no reference to Joe Scanlan, Abigail Ramsay, or Jennifer Kidwell in its marketing for Donelle Woolford. When the reality of Woolford's identity began to circulate, the artist collective HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?, also known as the Yams Collective, withdrew from the Biennial, citing their objections to the piece and experiences of disrespect from the museum. The Whitney responded with the following statement: “While we understand and respect the decision of HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?, we support all the artists in the Biennial and the curatorial choices of the exhibition’s three curators. The Whitney Biennial has always been a site for debate — no matter how contentious or difficult — of the most important issues confronting our culture.” This was the extent of their remarks on the topic of Donelle Woolford, and Woolford’s biography remains on the museum’s website without addendum.​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

                                                 Marketing for Danielle Woolford on the Whitney's Website

​

When pressed in interviews on the ethics of the Donelle Woolford creation, Joe Scanlan has been adamant about his equal collaboration with the actresses playing her, saying he “‘founded’ the ensemble of Donelle Woolford, but at this point it is an ongoing, loosely organized small working group.” He has also made the argument that, “There is a long history of black characters created by white authors...I don’t understand needing permission to do it." 

Donelle Woolford went on to tour the country as part of the Whitney Biennial, performing the piece “Dick’s Last Stand” in which Jennifer Kidwell plays Woolford reenacting a Richard Pryor routine. The piece was Kidwell’s conception.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

              

                                                           

 

                                                             Jennifer Kidwell as Donelle Woolford as Richard Pryor

​

If there was any speculation about whether or not the curators of The Whitney were aware of the Donelle Woolford invention, Michelle Grabner, the curator responsible for inviting Woolford to the Biennial, has said that "Joe was the very first artist I asked to visit when I started on my studio-visit process for the W.B.  I invited both Joe and Donelle. Joe turned my invitation down, but Donelle agreed to participate.... Donelle is foremost compelling to me as an invention of Joe Scanlan." Actress Jennifer Kidwell has also been vocal, however, in her defense of the project and her insistence that she is an equal collaborator free from exploitation. She makes the distinction that she and Abigail Ramsay are "the performative authors in this project and Joe is the visual author." She has also expressed frustration, however, that few media outlets have reached out to her or Ramsay directly for their perspective, saying that she has not "been contacted for my opinion as much as one would expect given that this is my work as well....I’ve felt un-addressed. There is a black artist present in this piece. Why am I erased from it? Why do I continue to be erased from it?”

​

​

​

​

​

​