---

In this series of original, non-commissioned essays published by Art Industry Insights With Reena Devi, arts journalist and editor Reena Devi confronts how creativity is being flattened and obscured in favor of safety and spin at this critical point in history.

---

It is no exaggeration that we are currently a world at war, fighting on multiple tangible and intangible fronts, in new and different ways we can barely fathom. One such crucial existential battle involves our grasp of established facts.

Recognising the clear and present dangers to our information eco-system, the United Nations (UN) issued an urgent appeal this summer to government, tech companies, advertisers, and the PR industry to “step up and take responsibility for the spread and monetisation of content that results in harm,” such as misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and other risks fuelling conflict, threatening democracy and human rights, and undermining public health and climate action.

Last week, during a televised interview discussing failures in communication regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, its vaccine and other scientific developments, the retired former director of the US National Institutes of Health, Dr Francis Collins, emphasised the importance of having “a good grasp on what is truth.”

“There are such things as established facts and they don’t care how you feel about them,” he added.

One of the most potent forces behind the pushback against empirical knowledge in modern and contemporary discourse is Public Relations (PR) and its varied machinations such as spin, social media, advertising, influencers, the internet, AI generated content, and more.

Of particularly popular use in the arsenal deployed to push back against established facts are implicit or explicit threats regarding media outlets’ ad-revenue-dependent relationships with advertisers, as well as decrying well sourced, credible investigative reports and studies as misinformation or “fake news”.

Take for example, the damning role PR played in exacerbating the climate crisis. The 90s saw E. Bruce Harrison, dubbed the father of environmental PR, working with America’s major industrial players to “spread doubt and persuade the public that climate change was not a problem.”

More recently, influencers have been posting about living in Saudi Arabia’s newly developed city Neom, intended to represent a unique, futuristic, residential development, according to the official website and related media coverage. In contrast, the aforementioned viral video shows an influencer blissfully unaware that her surroundings resemble “some sort of military base,” as observed by many online.

As far back as 2019, Saudi invited popular travel bloggers to visit the kingdom and post relevant content as part of a sponsored campaign “to rehabilitate its global image” in the lead-up to expanding its visa program. Predictably, the campaign incited backlash, causing several influencers to rush to block criticism or delete comments on their pages.

Saudi Arabia’s arts and tourism pivot often incites criticism for “artwashing” its human rights issues and oil economy. The country’s larger-than-life PR campaigns and their ensuing flak do very little to diminish such views, while also detracting attention from the “bold, innovative cultural practitioners from a great breadth of backgrounds, positions,” contributing to the growing creative landscape in Saudi and the region.

Dynamic art scenes beyond the West are a much needed and welcome development. However, calcification of the widely accepted art world omertà via PR machinations will only prove detrimental to the long-term growth and diversity of such art capitals.

Notably, PR spin and whitewashing efforts tend to thrive best with a code of silence.

The culture of self-censorship is particularly evident during financially volatile times like now, when protecting one’s pay check becomes a matter of urgency for those with limited power and privilege. This is heightened amongst arts organisations in countries with reportedly strict defamation laws, protecting errant employers from their employees speaking out on toxic workplaces, layoffs, financial hardship, and more.

In the wake of such silence, there are only narratives contrived to favour those looming large at the top, worsening social inequity, already a critical issue within the art world.

One of the most famous instances of art world PR facilitating the powerful and wealthy actually happened in 2017. At that time, the Sacklers were facing increasing pressure for their company Purdue Pharma producing OxyContin, the drug behind the US opioid crisis.

“I just spoke to head of communications at (the Dia Art Foundation),” stated Marissa Sackler, granddaughter of former Chief Executive of Purdue Pharma Mortimer D. Sackler, in a WhatsApp message from October 2017.

She told other members of her family that a New York Times reporter was contacting art institutions for an article about their connections to the Sacklers. “Dia shares PR representation with the Tate and a number of other art institutes who’ve been contacted. They are all planning to give short positive statements about us being supporters of theirs.”

It took till 2019 for a large number of major museums and universities to announce they would no longer be accepting funds from the Sacklers, some even removing the family name from their walls.

There are many more examples of how the art world is not an exception to toxic PR. In fact, it has pretty much become the rule. Unfortunately, the most glaring instances have only ever been shared off the record or experienced behind the scenes without any means of corroboration. Hopefully, this will change in time. 

Nonetheless, it is quite clear that the ceaseless PR machinations of the past few decades are not solutions to the challenges posed by today’s crises-ridden world. Especially when it has never been more urgent to advocate for transparency and face truth, logic, and facts. Even in one of the most opaque of spheres, the art world.

You can read the other non-commissioned (unpaid) essay in this series here.

Support independent arts writing here.