NEW YORK CITY – The Winter Show has committed to ending the exhibition of any racist material on any future show floor, announcing June 4 that the annual January event would write the prohibition into its contracts and vetting regulations.

The show wrote in a social media post, “As part of our responsibility to this social justice movement, The Winter Show commits to a Zero Tolerance policy on exhibiting racist material of any kind… We deeply regret that the show has permitted offensive and racist material in the past, and vow to do better.”

“The announcement is specifically referring to the Americana blackface toys, dolls and so forth,” said The Winter Show executive director Helen Allen. “That’s something we had actually discussed on the first day of the show this last year. At the time, we had no policy in our rules and vetting needs guidelines. So we had discussed at that time to change the policy and were going to announce it when we reached out to our exhibitors for the 2021 show. We decided we would make the statement publicly in the current climate, and we’ve drafted our new guidelines and will be discussing them with our dealers, vetting committee and co-chairs. We’ll leave a little room for reflection if there are pieces that we need to review on an individual basis.”

The show received complaints in the January 2020 edition when an exhibitor brought blackface material that fit squarely in the Americana category. The material remained on the floor, though the exhibitor said at the time that they would not bring it back in future years.

The Winter Show is the first major American show to publicly ban racist historical Americana material from the show floor.

For additional information, www.wintershow.com or 917-420-0669.