By Joseph Ross
National Portrait Gallery
The National Portrait Gallery recently made a devastating decision. They removed a video that was part of their groundbreaking exhibit titled Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. You might also want to read the Washington Post’s article about the removal of the video.
In short, within a longer video installation, part of this exhibit, a section appears in which ants crawl over a crucifix. This section was deemed objectionable by William Donohue, the president of The Catholic League, and by various members of Congress.
It’s been a while since we had this kind of “culture war” in American art and politics. But here we have it once again. What can be said of this kind of censorship? We have a dangerous situation when a religious organization and various political leaders are offended by something in a work of art, they complain, and then the museum, a public organization, removes that work of art.
What do you think? What should the National Portrait Gallery have done? How important is freedom of expression for artists?
My sense is that freedom of expression is absolute. If people are offended by a work of art, they are free to walk away from it. If people are offended by a work of literature, they are free to put that book down. Yet when a public museum decides to remove a piece of art from an exhibit which has been planned and approved by its curators, because some individuals are offended, that public museum limits the artistic expression of those artists whose work is featured—and it limits the public’s ability to see art based upon the sensitivities of the few.
What do you think?
Yes it should be completely free! And publicly funded too! We don’t have to “agree” with or “like” every work of art being produced or funded, but an art museum is not a church or religious institution– it’s a place for free exchange of ideas in a democratic country. Art challenges us to expand our boundaries and at times be uncomfortable.
Beware of the coming onslaught against funding for the arts. We as writers and artists need to be putting into words why art matters, and how it contributes to our culture. Similar attacks during the 1980′s were very effective.
Why does this show matter? What does it contribute to our consciousness as human beings?
Are we a more free country than Islamic countries that ban visual representations of Mohammad? Or do we too aim to be religious dictatorships because that way certain people who think themselves the majority will not be offended.
Thank you for this, Joe.
Here’s what I wrote at the Washington Post:
Thank you, Blake Gopnik, for this clear-eyed indictment of artistic censorship. Without free artistic expression, only one story gets told of a society. Our true American story is varied and complex and difficult – that’s what makes it vibrant and beautiful. Our artists mourn and celebrate and imagine alternative futures to the ones laid down for us by the preservers of the status quo. I hope the museums Gopnik challenges will take up the gauntlet and show the video. What if they all did, simultaneously? Then Split This Rock would organize the poets to read poems in praise of the love of women for women and men for men, Americans all.
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Gopnik is the Post’s art critic and he wrote a terrific defense of freedom of artistic expression in yesterday’s paper. I urge all the readers of the Basin Blog to go to his op ed and post a comment. Most of those so far are pro-censorship – and several are quite nasty! As Melissa says, artists, writers, and all supporters of free expression need to be out front on this. Otherwise we will be steamrolled!
Here’s the link to the Gopnik piece: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113007227.html
Thanks, Melissa and Sarah for your thoughtful comments. I fear we are entering the “culture wars” full-on once again. It seems hard to believe that a public museum would cave in like this. The fears are great.