An art exhibition criticizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement was abruptly shuttered by the University of North Texas this week.
Victor Quiñonez, the artist behind the exhibition, said he learned about the university’s decision when students messaged him on social media to say the windows of the gallery in Denton, northwest of Dallas, had been covered and the door locked.
Quiñonez, who was born in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and raised in East Dallas, packed political messages into everyday scenes of his childhood in the exhibition, titled “Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá” (“Not From Here, Not From There”).
In a life-size Botánica store, candles and saints were presented with blessings like “student loans disappear.” Among hand-woven rugs and murals of street vendors, he included large acrylic paletas, frozen Mexican desserts.
Those translucent treats were mounted on wooden sticks featuring the language “Immigration and Cruelty Enforcement” on a cart marked “I.C.E Scream.” The Department of Homeland Security’s logo was also altered to read “Stolen Land Security.”
The exhibition was supposed to run for three months. But on Wednesday, a week after it opened, Quiñonez received a short email from Stefanie Dlugosz-Acton, the director of the galleries at the public university’s College of Visual Arts and Design.
The email said the University of North Texas had terminated a loan agreement with Boston University and would return his artwork, providing no further explanation.
Dlugosz-Acton and the University of North Texas did not respond to requests for comment.
The university’s policy about art exhibited on campus says that it “does not discriminate against works of art based on its content or the viewpoint(s) expressed” and that its decisions must be consistent with the First Amendment and the State Constitution.
“Artistic expression does not automatically rise to the level of infringing on constitutional, statutory or other legal rights solely because a viewer is offended by the idea or opinion portrayed in a work of art,” the policy says.
The policy says the university may remove artwork for several reasons, including if it threatens people’s health and safety or “presents an imminent threat of riotous conduct.” Last year, after state lawmakers complained, the university removed two pieces of a student-led exhibition that supported Palestinians.
Quiñonez, 48, who uses the artist name Marka27, said the content in his exhibition had not changed from his proposal to the university. “There was nothing there that would have caught them off guard or by surprise,” he said.
Republican legislators in Texas have restricted what can be taught at public universities. Texas A&M has ended its women’s and gender studies program and overhauled how race ideology is discussed, while the University of Texas is auditing all of its gender studies courses.
Similar concerns have spilled over into museums.
At the Dallas Museum of Art, a planned public performance by a nude transgender artist became an invitation-only offsite event after officials worried about backlash. State police officers also seized photographs from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth that included the artist Sally Mann’s nude children. (A grand jury declined to bring charges of child sexual abuse imagery.)
Quiñonez, a U.S. citizen whose father was twice deported to Mexico, said the University of North Texas knew about the content of his exhibition well in advance. He also thought the work would be powerful at a school where 30 percent of students identified as Hispanic or Latino last academic year.
“Everything felt like it was just something that was meant to be,” Quiñonez said, “to come back to where I grew up, to have this big exhibition that’s making a huge statement on all the current social issues that are happening among Indigenous and immigrant people.”
Quiñonez’s exhibition was hosted at Boston University in the fall. Lissa Cramer, the director of the university’s art galleries, said in a statement that the three-month show was “well-received” and that it was informed by email that the exhibition in Texas had ended.
To accompany his exhibition, Quiñonez built a 22-foot Maya pyramid out of painted coolers that was dedicated to street vendors and migrant workers. It was originally displayed in a Boston park before being moved to the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas.
The sculpture will remain there for another month. But Quiñonez is looking for a new space to display his other artwork, seeking an institution he considers “brave enough to tell these special stories.”
Michaela Towfighi is a Times arts and culture reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early career journalists.
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