Los Angeles — A private Christian university in Malibu has closed an exhibition six months ahead of schedule, following requests from at least a dozen artists to withdraw from the show after the school removed or altered art it considered “political.” The news comes amid a federal attack on nonprofit organizations whose actions or words have run afoul of the Trump administration’s ideologies. Hold My Hand in Yours at Pepperdine University’s Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art features a range of artwork that centers hands as symbols of labor, identity, care, and connection. Curated by Weisman Museum Director Andrea Gyorody, the exhibition opened on September 6 and was slated to run until March 29. Last Wednesday, October 1, Elana Mann, one of the artists in the show, was informed by Gyorody that her video “Call to Arms 2015-2025” (2025) had been turned off at the university’s request.Hold My Hand in Yours installation view with work by Elana Mann in center (photo by Paul Salveson, courtesy Weisman Museum)Mann’s video documents performances and activations involving a series of sculptural instruments the artist made from the cast of an arm, examples of which were also included in the show. These objects have a cupped hand with an opening on one end, like a megaphone, and a trumpet-like bell at the other end. Chronicling “ten years of collaboration, unruly sounds and collective listening,” as a title card states, most of the performances took place at art institutions. One performance shown in the video, however, was part of the 2017 May Day March in Los Angeles, during which participants used Mann’s horns to chant phrases like “No Justice, No Peace,” “Say it Loud, Say it Clear, Immigrants are Welcome Here,” and “No aceptaremos una América racista” (“We won’t accept a racist America”). Throughout the video, interstitial titles provide historical context, referencing the aftermath of the 2016 election, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the “summer of racial reckonings.”AMBOS, “Con Nuestros Manos Construimos Deidades (With Our Hands We Build Deities)” (2023) (photo by Paul Salveson, courtesy Weisman Museum)Left: Detail of AMBOS, “Con Nuestros Manos Construimos Deidades (With Our Hands We Build Deities)” (2023) (photo by Henry Adams, courtesy Pepperdine Graphic); Right: Installation view of AMBOS’s work (photo by Paul Salveson, courtesy Weisman Museum)School administrators also took issue with an embroidery that read “Save the Children” and “Abolish ICE,” part of “Con Nuestros Manos Construimos Deidades (With Our Hands We Build Deities)” (2023), a large collaborative sculpture by the group Art Made Between Opposite Sides (AMBOS). According to Natalie Godinez, executive director of AMBOS, officials turned the fabric swatch so that the text was no longer visible and removed a sign informing visitors they could touch the artwork. The work was the result of a series of workshops focused on issues of cross-border migration held by AMBOS in Tijuana, San Diego, and Los Angeles. Over 240 participants made casts of their hands and sewed patches with messages of protection resembling the devotional Christian garments known as scapulars.“This was made in community across borders, with the idea that you can touch the hand of the person on the other side of the border,” Godinez told Hyperallergic. “By censoring a piece of the artwork and not allowing people to interact with it, it waters down the meaning.”Detail of AMBOS, “Con Nuestros Manos Construimos Deidades (With Our Hands We Build Deities)” (2023) (detail) (photo by Paul Salveson, courtesy Weisman Museum)In response to the school’s actions, Mann and AMBOS requested that their works be withdrawn from the show. Both artists told Hyperallergic that Pepperdine administration did not explain their decision. In response to Hyperallergic’s inquiry, a representative for the school cited the works’ political content. “Because Pepperdine’s established practice with the Weisman Museum has been to avoid overtly political content consistent with the University’s nonprofit status, it removed these two pieces from display,” Michael Friel, Pepperdine’s senior director of Communications and Public Relations, told Hyperallergic.President Trump and Republicans have ramped up threats to the nonprofit sector in recent weeks. On September 25, Trump signed the memorandum “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” which instructs federal agencies to prosecute nonprofit organizations “engaged in acts of political violence.” Advocacy groups have warned that the memo’s vague language gives the government power to silence dissent and suppress diverging views.Works by Roksana Pirouzmand and Carmen Argote, who asked to withdraw from the showIn the past week, several artists in the show requested that their work also be removed or covered in solidarity with Mann and AMBOS, and as a gesture of protest against the school’s actions.“Elana [Mann]’s work strikes me as overtly egalitarian — it is about the right to free speech, the right to protest, and the right not to be silenced,” Cara Levine, an artist included in Hold My Hand in Yours, told Hyperallergic. “I don’t see it as arguing for or against any particular political position … It argues for the essential value of free political speech.”In her letter to Gyorody requesting that her work be withdrawn, artist Carmen Argote wrote that “the censorship of Elana Mann’s work and the collective work of AMBOS being censored is a loss for the students and for the art community, and it signals that the gallery, under current conditions, can no longer function as a place for art.”“Removing, censoring, or modifying artwork under opaque circumstances is alarming, and does not bode well for the state of creative expression, especially in a university context that is supposed to foster teaching and learning,” said artist Stephanie Syjuco, who requested that her video “Black Out the Sun” (2021) be withdrawn from the show. “On its website, Pepperdine states that it is committed to an inclusive environment, and I sincerely hope that this extends to the content of its museum exhibitions.”After several artists asked to remove their works, the university decided to close the exhibition altogether on Wednesday, October 8, Friel told Hyperallergic.Although Mann said she has dealt with some pushback regarding her work in the past, she had never had a piece removed from display after a show had opened. “I was caught totally by surprise,” she said. Even so, Mann, like many artists in the show, noted similarities between this situation and larger attacks on art and culture taking place nationwide. “The work began during a very specific cycle of politics that is now reaching its apex,” Mann said.