The renowned artist Kehinde Wiley has sent a letter to President Trump asking to buy back one of his paintings after administration officials removed it from the American Embassy in the Dominican Republic, mocked it as “aesthetically terrifying” and falsely claimed it featured a lesbian picnic.
After government officials suggested they might sell the work, Mr. Wiley took steps to reclaim it.
The experience left him feeling a “deep sadness,” Mr. Wiley told The New York Times on Monday in his first public comments on the controversy.
“If the administration is not particularly interested in the work, bring it home. Let me have it,” Mr. Wiley added. “It was a really successful painting and it is a shame it was so little understood.”
Since returning to office, President Trump has intensified a campaign to rid some of the nation’s leading cultural institutions of what he views as liberal bias and unpatriotic narratives. Officials have criticized the Smithsonian museums and attempted to control the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.
Still, it is unusual for the Trump administration to single out a particular artist like Mr. Wiley, who is known for painting President Barack Obama’s official portrait.
“I just happen to be the guy who painted Obama,” Mr. Wiley said. “That is the elephant in the living room.”
The controversy over the embassy painting erupted this year after Leah Campos, the ambassador to the Dominican Republic, noticed the artwork. She disliked the picture, which was one of the first things someone entering the embassy would see.
She contacted Erin Scavino, the head of the State Department’s Art in Embassies program. Ms. Scavino, a former “Apprentice” contestant who is married to one of President Trump’s closest aides, has used her position to politicize federally funded arts programs, according to former State Department officials. She has attempted to purge the government’s art collection of other works she dislikes and has given important leadership positions in culture to personal friends who — like her — lacked professional experience in the arts.
The two women came up with a plan to remove and potentially sell Mr. Wiley’s painting, which is named “Young Artists After Siamesas 1960” and was commissioned by the Art in Embassies program in 2013. The artist said he spent two years studying the work of Dominican painters to design the composition and then asked four local art students to pose against a floral backdrop.
The State Department initially sidestepped questions about what made the painting objectionable. A department spokeswoman instead raised questions about the artist’s reputation and cited accusations of sexual assault, which Mr. Wiley has denied.
Then an interview with Ms. Campos on a Dominican radio show emerged in which she described the painting as a lesbian picnic.
“I saw a huge painting of a picnic in a park with flowers and some lesbians,” she said in Spanish.
Ms. Scavino said in a podcast interview that she was responsible for the painting’s removal, calling it “aesthetically terrifying.”
Mr. Wiley said in his interview that he was particularly confused as to why officials claimed his work featured a lesbian picnic.
“I wasn’t quite sure how they got there,” he said. “What I have in the painting depicted are four young people coming together within a field of flowers,” he added.
“Was it homophobic? It’s possible,” he said of the ambassador’s comment. “To look at the painting and draw those conclusions presupposes a lot. It says a lot about panic and fear, and about creating a specific type of narrative surrounding queer people and people of color.”
In the letter sent late last week by certified mail, Mr. Wiley explained that he had accepted the commission because he believed that embassies were places where art could create a connection between countries.
“If your administration has determined that it no longer wishes to display the work, I would like to ask for the opportunity to purchase it back,” he wrote in the letter to administration officials, which was seen by The Times. It was sent to President Trump, Ms. Scavino, Ambassador Campos and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The White House declined to comment. The State Department and Ms. Scavino did not respond to requests for comment.
The debacle over Mr. Wiley’s work comes as he is preparing for his first major U.S. exhibition in about two years.
In 2024, following the sexual assault allegations, two museums canceled plans to show his work. But on Nov. 6, his dealer, Sean Kelly, will present nearly a dozen paintings and other artworks in his Manhattan gallery space. The portraits originate from chance encounters between the artist and ordinary New Yorkers.
The artist hopes to celebrate not only his return to New York this fall, but also the return of his embassy painting.
“I thought it was a really successful painting, and it is a shame it was so little understood,” he said. “Out of all the artists in the world and the millions of paintings that could have been chosen at this point in time, Why me? Why this moment? Why this painting?”
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