Mapplethorpe Foundation Blocks Roy Cohn Portrait from Biography Cover Over Trump Concerns
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation has refused to let an upcoming biography of Roy Cohn use a 1981 Mapplethorpe portrait of Cohn on its cover, citing political concerns — including worry about how Cohn's famous protégé, Donald Trump, might react.
The decision, first reported by the New York Times on 26 August 2026, means the biography's publisher must find another cover image for a book about one of America's most controversial lawyers and political fixers. Roy Cohn, who died in 1986, made his name as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist investigations in the 1950s and later became a power broker in New York real estate and Republican politics. Among those he mentored was a young Donald Trump.
The portrait in question is a gelatin silver print — a traditional black-and-white photographic process — measuring roughly 15 by 15 inches. Mapplethorpe shot it in 1981. The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which holds the print in its collection, lists it among works gifted by the Foundation, along with a companion holding at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (Getty collection listing; LACMA collection listing).
The Foundation, which controls the rights to Mapplethorpe's work, declined to license the image for the biography cover. The New York Times reported that the decision was influenced by concerns about Trump's reaction to seeing his former mentor's portrait deployed on a book cover. CNN's Reliable Sources newsletter and Talking Points Memo confirmed the denial on 28 August 2026, though neither publication named the biography's author or publisher (CNN Reliable Sources; Talking Points Memo).
ArtNews, also reporting on 28 August, described the Foundation's decision as rooted in political concerns without specifying further detail (ArtNews). The Foundation has not issued a public statement beyond confirming the denial.
The refusal places a rare political filter on a foundation best known for stewarding the legacy of one of the 20th century's most photographed figures. Mapplethorpe, who died in 1989, is celebrated for his formally exacting portraits, still lifes and figure studies — work that has itself been the subject of censorship battles, most notably the 1989 controversy over federal funding for his travelling retrospective. That a foundation bearing his name is now declining a licensing request on political grounds adds an unexpected fold to that history.
The photograph itself remains accessible to the public. It hangs in the Getty's collection in Los Angeles, and a version is held by LACMA. The Foundation's decision affects only the commercial licence to reproduce the image on a book cover — not the right to view it.
