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Staffers at the Ackland Art Museum called university police in late September after they found obscene posters littered across their space. The posters bore imagery that evoked swastikas and the Ku Klux Klan — and staffers didn’t know where they came from.
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The Daily Tar Heel, UNC’s student newspaper, first reported this story.
Four posters were left on a bench, a chair, in the coatroom, and on the floor of the museum, UNC told The News & Observer.
“An appeal from heaven,” one poster reads in an image obtained by The Daily Tar Heel. It’s in the style of a political cartoon. Below the text is a drawing of Jesus burning on the cross, Donald Trump holding a clown nose, a branding iron with a dollar sign reminiscent of a swastika, and a silhouette of a Klan member.
“Hey Jesus, we got something for ya,” the poster reads. “Hey Jesus, turn that other cheek round.”
University police consulted with Ackland’s security staff and a student worker to learn more about the incident, UNC said, and afterward determined that the posters weren’t a physical threat and didn’t amount to vandalism.
Student body president Devin Duncan told The N&O that he believes “these posters were intended as a form of artistic expression and were not deliberately placed to send a threatening or hateful message to anyone.”
Still, though, he says the impact on the community is real — and he too finds the posters concerning. The campus is raw from a string of racial episodes that have tainted the fall semester, including an intruder threatening Black students at an event, an antisemitic poster hung in the law school, and a group of Taiwanese students targeted with monkey-like gestures from a group of white men.
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“This situation,” he said, “has exposed a gap between what was intended by the artist and what is being felt by members of our community.”
Museum staff also reported the situation to the University Compliance Office, which handles reports of discrimination and harassment. On Tuesday, museum director Shalini Le Gall sent out an email to staff and other stakeholders, reassuring them that “such material will not be tolerated at our museum and workplace.”
UNC told The N&O that even though “this situation did not rise to the level of a criminal act, offensive material does not reflect the experience we want for those in our community. Based on the circumstances currently known, we believe engagement with the University Compliance Office is the most useful step.”
The poster in the other image obtained by The Daily Tar Heel is even less easy to parse. It appears to list different kinds of bros: tech bros, sports bros, gamer bros, gym bros, and Warner Bros.
The university encourages individuals with information about the posters to contact the University Compliance Office.
This story was originally published October 9, 2026 at 2:19 PM with the headline “Posters bearing racist symbols found at UNC art museum. Their source is unknown..”
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