Fall of Freedom Returns With Hundreds of Anti-Trump Art Actions

The art and activism initiative Fall of Freedom launches its second year this weekend, October 2 through October 4, with hundreds of events across the United States. Public artworks, concerts, and exhibitions unite artists and cultural organizations in opposition to what organizers describe as an increasingly authoritarian Trump administration.

A group of cultural workers organizes the initiative, including artists Dread Scott and Jenny Polak, playwright Lynn Nottage, and writer and curator Laura Raicovich. Fall of Freedom held its inaugural run last November. Since then, organizers say, the administration's actions against the arts and free expression have escalated: Trump's efforts to stamp his name on the Kennedy Center, repeated threats to strip federal funding from and influence programming at the Smithsonian Institution, and the targeting of public artworks such as Joel Shapiro's "Blue" (2019) and José de Rivera's "Infinity" (1967).

"Fascism in the United States is advancing and metastasizing," Scott told Hyperallergic over email. "Migrants are being deported in record numbers. The rule of law is in tatters. And the arts are assaulted. They want to silence us. But artists and musicians are unruly and we refuse to be quiet."

The movement's main event is Undersiege, a production conceived by Nottage with fellow playwright and MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship grant recipient Dominique Morisseau. The work features monologues from over 40 Black women and femmes. The National Black Theatre and the Studio Museum in Harlem will present the performance at the uptown museum on Friday, October 2.

"Artists are collectively using this moment to say our voices won't and can't be silenced," Nottage told Hyperallergic over email.

"It is beautiful to witness how many people across the country have responded to this call to action by organizing concerts, readings, workshops, exhibits and salons centering art as a form of resistance, celebration and liberation," Nottage added.

Organizers scaled up the movement earlier this year with a round of art and activism events nationwide around May Day.

The fall program spans a wide geographic and formal range. It includes a Roger Guenver Smith one-man show honoring painter Jean-Michel Basquiat at the New York Theatre Workshop; a zine-making workshop in Little Rock, Arkansas, focused on a practice now under scrutiny by the Trump administration; and a convening at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, where participants are encouraged to bring and share their favorite stories about the institution. During last year's edition, organizers carried out a dance protest at the Kennedy Center in response to Trump's policies.

The name "Fall of Freedom" is a play on words, meant to signify both the hope and the uncertainty of the current political climate. Kris Grey, a transgender and nonbinary artist who participated in the first edition, addressed both impulses in an essay for Hyperallergic last year.

"A core ethos of the project is the belief that creativity, in and of itself, is a practice of resistance," Grey wrote. "Art is not a luxury in moments like this; it is a survival strategy."

Whether the initiative's rapid growth — from a single November weekend to a year-round campaign with hundreds of actions — can translate cultural dissent into political pressure remains the question its organizers will face as the 2026 programming unfolds.