At the Whitney, a protest against Dana Schutz' painting of Emmett Till: "She has nothing to say to the Black community about Black trauma." pic.twitter.com/C6x1JcbwRa — Scott W. H. Young (@hei_scott) March 17, 2017

This morning several news outlets — including Artsy, Frieze, and Out Magazine — published parts or all of an open letter allegedly written by artist Dana Schutz asking the co-curators of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks, to remove her controversial painting of Emmett Till from the exhibition. It soon became clear that the letter was fake.

“It’s a hoax,” Stephen Soba, the Whitney Museum’s director of communications, told Hyperallergic on the phone. “It’s certainly well written, but we asked [Schutz], and she had nothing to do with writing it.” He added that the museum is still trying to determine the source of the letter.

Schutz has come under fire for “Open Casket” (2016), a painting based on photographs of the disfigured 14-year-old boy in his casket. Protesters have blocked visitors from seeing the work at the museum, while others have demanded its removal and even its destruction. As recently as yesterday, however, Schutz had said in interviews that she felt the painting should remain on view, making the apparent sudden change of position expressed in the open letter seem all the more suspect.

“I understand that many have attempted to defend my work in the interest of free speech, and with calls against censorship,” the fake letter reads in part. “However, the artists and writers generously critiquing ‘Open Casket’ have made plain to me that I have benefited from the very systems of racism I aimed to critique, in a way that blinded me to what my re-presenting this image would mean to Black audiences.”

The fake letter, which as of this writing is still posted on several sites as authentic, is included below: