Guggenheim Curator Chaédria LaBouvier Tries To Doxx White Men Over "Miami Vice"—#Vicegate Explained

Chaédria LaBouvier is the first person of Cuban descent and the first black author of a catalog (Basquiat's Defacement: The Untold Story) to curate an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum.

With all of her amazing achievements, LaBouvier confers high prestige. So why did she recently try to doxx white men on X/Twitter? Surely, they must have said something terrible, spread misinformation about her – whatever they did, you'd think it warranted LaBouvier's reaction.

#Vicegate Explained

It turns out that what started LaBouvier's tirade on X was the 2006 movie Miami Vice. Brandon Streussnig, a writer and movie buff, announced he was going to show his girlfriend his favorite movie. "gf asked me to show her my favorite movie tonight. Probably the most important step in the relationship. No goin back now," he wrote, adding a snippet from Miami Vice.

To which LaBouvier responded, "Straight men live on a completely different planet than the rest of us, WHOT is this." For the record, Streussnig is bisexual. LaBouvier boldly assumed his sexuality to her almost 30k followers.

These two tweets took place five days ago, on July 4, 2024.

The curator then began hitting back at all her critics in the comment section. Streussnig said his girlfriend asked to see Miami Vice "and had a great time," telling LaBouvier, "Good luck with your miserable f*ckin life." She wrote, "f*ck you Brandon" in response. Many queer-identifying individuals joined the conversation to tell LaBouvier that they also loved Miami Vice, countering her implication that the film is intertwined with white men and heterosexuality.

It didn't end there. She continued to respond to tweets for days and doubled down, eventually showing some commentators' place of work. She goes on to say that the discourse has "so much more to do w/the mental health crisis in this country than anything I said about a movie that even the stars and directors distance themselves from," adding that everything is a result of people feeling like "no one is listening, the class issues & that people look down on them."

On July 6, LaBouvier revealed her plans to use the Miami Vice "thread in the future for research; it’s just too good not to, and am engaging in it for response." She asked X users if they were willing to go on record with their thoughts, but there were no takers.

LaBouvier continued to defend herself and, in some tweets, offered her takes on Miami Vice's "problematic" heterosexual aestheticism.

Many wondered how she was still going.

On July 8, LaBouvier shared a screenshot of a commenter's LinkedIn page to seemingly doxx them, which she denies. She said she was a "very good researcher" and discovered where the user, Ryan Davis, worked. Davis previously asked LaBouvier to "shut the f*ck up" and "maybe go outside for once." His username is literally @YoSoyRyanDavis, and he's using a photo of himself as his profile picture.

When more people joined in on the drama, LaBouvier tweeted that they could try all they wanted to rail her page, but she would not back down. "I don't care about validating you, that you feel inferior, your class rage, performing civility, etc," she wrote. "I don't ride the storm, I AM the storm. I regret nothing, and meant every word of it."

By this point, people were urging LaBouvier to "put the phone down."

She didn't.

She hasn't.

She never will.

The Atlantic on Chaédria LaBouvier

The Atlantic wrote an incredible piece in 2022 on LaBouvier’s time at the Guggenheim Museum (I highly recommend it) and her history of strong accusations against institutions and individuals, some of which include:

• Calling out a curator involved in a Basquiat exhibition in London, claiming that they tried to erase her from discussions about Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart). She wrote that the said curator was a “mediocre b*tch … trying to erase me from my own Defacement conversation” and that she belonged to a “special ring of yoga-feminist hell.” When the woman was said to offer her thanks to LaBouvier in the museum’s acknowledgments, LaBouvier responded with, “Lol, #bitchplease.”

• Claimed that David Shulman, the BBC producer of the documentary Basquiat: Rage To Riches, "stole" her research. They have denied LaBouvier’s allegations. 

• That British GQ allegedly did not cite her work in a previous Dazed article about Basquiat, even though Dazed themselves did not find any evidence of plagiarism. “I am SO tired of these unoriginal ass White people writing about Basquiat, curating Basquiat, and they are stealing the entire goddamn time,” LaBouvier wrote at the time.

LaBouvier publicly slammed the Guggenheim and Nancy Spector, the former artistic director and chief curator who brought LaBouvier on board, alleging mistreatment and racial insensitivity. Spector stepped down, but no evidence of racial discrimination against LaBouvier was found following an independent investigation. 

The Atlantic author Helen Lewis reflected on Spector’s departure: "When Nancy Spector left the Guggenheim, she lost more than her job. She lost her professional reputation. She lost friends. And she lost the rest of her career. She had taught intermittently at Yale’s school of art since 1994, but has not been invited back since leaving the Guggenheim. Now in her 60s, Spector cannot easily rebuild the life she once had.”

Evie deserves to be heard. Support our cause and help women reclaim their femininity by subscribing today.