Art Professor Faces Threats for KKK-Inspired Piece

Billie Grace Lynn, an associate professor of art at the University of Miami, has received death threats over a controversial work of art showing off campus. Her piece, “American Mask,” features three Ku Klux Klan hoods made out of American flags. Inspired by the August march on Charlottesville, Va., by white supremacists, it is meant to express how patriotism can be a guise for racism. “I was outraged that our flag was being carried next to these two other flags,” the Nazi flag and the Confederate battle flag, she told Newsweek. But online trolls have targeted her for harassment, wishing her dead, according to the magazine. Lynn said she won’t censor herself in any way. The university said in a statement that art that provokes “reaction and conversation [is] not new, nor the unique province” of Miami. “It would be our hope that those conversations can happen in ways that are respectful of all points of view.”