Bill T. Jones - Remembering

Bill T. Jones in The Windy City

Dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones was in residence this past week at Columbia College Chicago where I currently teach. Having first seen Bill perform in New York 1980 in a solo program at the late Hazel Bryant's Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art, located near Lincoln Center. Few outside of his immediate dance community had heard of Bill at that point, but word among the black arts community in NY was that he was someone to see. And so a group of us went to check him out. I've never forgotten Bill T. Jones from that moment on. His performance that day heralded for me an introduction to a singular creative talent. While he and his late partner Arnie Zane went on to establish a company that was increasingly celebrated around the world, the charismatic Jones could clearly have commanded any stage with his individually compelling presence.

A week before his residency at Columbia I had gone to the premiere of A Good Man, a documentary that follows Jones and company from conception to the presentation of his Fondly Do We Hope...Fervently Do We Pray, which was commissioned by the Ravinia Festival in Chicago and filmed by Kartemquin Films, better known for their social documentaries, such as Hoop Dreams and Five Girls. The film is an intimate look at one artist's process as he struggles to shape a piece commemorating the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Watching A Good Man made me think back on Bill's history, and made want to reminisce with him about some of that history. So I was hoping to see him when he visited again. When I saw him the following week at Columbia College's Dance Center, we shared a few minutes one evening before he spoke with a group of dance students and his company performed. While reflecting on those long ago days when I had first seen him perform in New York, and what the ensuing years had wrought, our conversation turned to history, and how much of that history young students might or might not be aware of, and how that history might possibly inspire them...or not. How many of them, for example, were aware of that highly charged moment in 1994 when Bill staged "Still/Here," much to the public disfavor of one Arlene Croce, then the dance critic for New Yorker magazine? And what might it matter to them? And should it? Croce's article infamously began, "I have not seen Bill T. Jones's "Still/Here" and have no plans to review it." She then goes on, "Don't go. In not reviewing "Still/Here" I am sparing myself and my readers a bad time, and yet I don't really see that I have much choice."Before expended several thousand words about this performance she had no intentions of seeing, Croce attempts to defend the critical farce she is about to undertake. "A critic has three options: (1) to see and review; (2) to see and not review; (3) not to see. A fourth option - to write about what one has not seen becomes possible on strange occasions like "Still/Here," from which one feels excluded by reasons of its express intentions..."

Croce then goes on to dismiss this work, coining the phrase "victim art," and derisively asserting that in bringing the real world--the world in which people confront, in various ways, their own mortality--to the stage Jones had committed a aesthetic sin: drawing a vivd and provocative connective line between the world as lived and the world as transformed into subjective expressive material...as if all art doesn't do this in some way. But Croce loudly lamented the manipulation which she herself would not be suckered into: "There's no doubt that the public like to see victims, if only to patronize them with applause," she dismissively opined. She then goes on to lambast, "dissed blacks, abused women, or disenfranchised homosexuals" for daring to think that their lives are worthy of finding their way into any arena other than the merely pathological.

The article became a critical flashpoint, raising a host of issues regarding the relationship of art practice and the larger society, and how those two could (or should not) intersect. For someone like Bill T. Jones, who had up until that moment been lauded as a breakthrough dancer and choreographer and dancer nationally and internationally it had to come as a rude awakening. Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Company had by then become an institution within the dance world, with laudatory reviews being more the norm. New York Times then dance critic Jennifer Dunning wrote, of a 1988 performance by the company, "The dances looked elegant and effervescent...The choreography has always had an unusually strong visual element and theatricality. Its suppressed heat did not dissipate on this expansive stage." Collaborations with rising art stars such as Keith Haring has further raised the company's profile, giving it even greater cachet. But then along came Arlene Croce.

All of this was on my mind as I sat with Bill at Columbia's Dance Center, contemplating the young dance students populating the building, and wondering how many knew this piece of history. Each generation, of course, makes its own history. But how to make use of history's lessons if one doesn't know it? Which is why it is so important to revisit those defining moments, those moments when a deeply meaningful conversation took place. How much of history belongs to those who lived it, and how much belongs to all of us? Without viewing history as a set of instructions, it can provide valuable perspective, reassurances even. For some young artist (dancer or otherwise) who might be thinking of embarking on an ambitious path of pursuing work that some might find less than palatable, knowing that the battle has been at least partly fought (if not completely won) can afford some reassurance, some much needed validation.

One has only to look at recent controversies around the "Hide/Seek" exhibition at the Smithsonian, and the ways in which this exhibition was attacked, sight unseen, by opportunistic politicians turned self appointed censors and critics, to know that forward looking art is always suspect in some quarters. Young artists do indeed need to know these histories. And those of us who were present at the scene, and know that history firsthand, need to periodically step forward and voice it, and do our jobs as custodians of that history, lest it and its lessons be lost on a new generation. Our failure to keep these various crises present in the social and conversations makes the arts community continually vulnerable each tike a new threat rears its head. In that regards we are still, sadly, without a coherent script--or compelling response--as to why the larger public should care when we are attacked.

Jeanette Ingberman, R.I.P

When Jeanette Ingberman passed away this past August at the age of 59, we lost a real visionary. Along with her husband and creative partner, artist Papo Colo, Ingberman created the now venerable institution Exit Art in 1982. Weathering the many storms of change, the duo kept the institution viable through three relocations, managing to stay one step ahead of New York's economic and real estate juggernaut to build and grow an institution that by now has probably benefitted hundreds of artists, if not thousands. Consistently exhibiting those established artists whose works did not neatly fit the market driven economy of the art world, as well as those emerging artists with few viable exhibition opportunities, or those making work that was explicitly political in nature, Exit Art became an essential and imperative institution. Not content to continue working at other institutions (including the International Center of Photography and the Bronx Museum) and perhaps rise through the ranks, Ingberman harbored a more ambitious and less orthodox vision.

That she and Colo were able to grow that vision over three decades is ample testimony to their creative and institutional savvy, and their ability to get others to share their vision and make it--and the institution--their own. Plenty of people bitch about what is wrong with the mainstream art world, and how much of a seemingly closed shop it can sometimes appear to be. Fewer are willing and able to craft an institutional answer and solution to that conundrum and pose a viable alternative. Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo together did that...and fabulously. All of those mainstream museums and institutions that have belatedly come to embrace "diversity" in their exhibition programming have Exit Art to thank for showing them the way early on. Thank you for being a fabulous visionary Jeanette. We will all miss your presence, but continue to be inspired by your vision. May our continued work on behalf of others honor your memory.

Photographs (from the top): Bill T. Jones © Getty Images; Promotional poster, "A Good Man" courtesy of Kartemquin Films; "Still/Here" © Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Company; Keith Haring and Bill T. Jones photograph © Tseng Kwong Chi; Courtesy Columbia College Chicago Dance Center; Book cover, "Hide/Seek" courtesy Smithsonian Institutions; Jeanette Ingberman photograph courtesy Walter Robinson, Artnet

Art and Its Various Publics or Beyond The White Cube

Reshaping The Art/Museum/Public Experience

The past few months have been interesting ones for those interested in the ways in which art practice, public institutional practice and their various audiences interact. As the economy has taken a downturn lately public institutions have begun to think about the ways in which they do or do not engage that larger audience that their very survival depends upon. With falling attendance, the rising costs of museum admissions institutions are realizing that a philosophy of "me-ism" and exclusivity is not only inappropriate, it can be downright fatal. So increasingly institutions are undergoing a reexamination of their missions, their very reasons for being. The smarter ones are coming to realize that their days as thriving public institutions are numbered unless they do more to engage that public than simply unlock the doors in the morning and collect their admission fees. This has led to a number of initiatives to expand the conversation taking place within pubic institutions, making them spaces in which a more dialogical experience can take place. This is not the case, of course, for every museum, but a fundamental shift is taking place, and taking real hold in more than a few places.

Of course, as one conference participant reminded those gathered at The School in New York awhile back for a conference on publicly engaging art practice, quite a number of community based institutions and organizations have long been engaged in creating just this kind of close relationship with their communities, and not just as a response to dwindling attendance or institutional reinvention. Institutions like the Studio Museum in Harlem and el Museo del Barrio in New York, and the DuSable Museum and National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago were created because both artists and audiences of color did not feel welcome in more mainstream places, nor did they see their art and culture adequately reflected there. Some of these institutions, like the Studio Museum have evolved to a point where they are now no longer entirely peripheral to the mainstream, with artists exhibiting in that institution also being exhibited on national and global platforms, even as the institution attracts an ever more diverse audience in addition to its original core constituency.

But current realities--along with a genuine institutional introspection and a more progressive stance on the part of a younger generation of museum directors and curators--are conspiring to bring forth a more engaging climate for rethinking the ways in which art is experienced. A number of foundations are also stepping up to provide support for just this type of institutional paradigm shift. The federal government--through the National Endowment for the Arts--has also created programs designed to brings citizens into a more dynamic and inclusive relationship with these institutions. Having been a panelist and consultant for two foundations recently as well as a panelist for the NEA, I've seen firsthand how this shift is being tied to funding. Some institutions are being more ambitious in these undertakings than others, and even the more conservative among them are developing programs to go beyond mere "family day" activities and reach for a more radical rethinking of the institutional space and it various prerogatives around how art is experienced and how to make the art viewing experience one conducive to multiple levels and kinds of engagement that do not merely propose to perpetuate a "master narrative" for a passive audience.

The recently completed Mark Bradford Project at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art was one recent example of a mainstream museum engaging in a radical reexamination of how it was functioning within the equation of art/artist/audience. Taking place over the course of several months, The Mark Bradford Project sought to not only engage 21 young high school artists from Chicago in an ongoing working/mentoring relationship with Bradford, but also sought to introduce Bradford broadly to a number of different communities in Chicago, from the art community to churchgoers, seeking to more deeply engage those communities through Bradford's presence and work during his residency. The project began last September with an ominously sounding program called "The Dialogue," which brought together museum theorist, consultant and educator Elaine Heumann Gurian and Bradford in a discussion moderated by MCA's director Madeleine Grynsztejn. Gurian, who has done museum based work and study for almost four decades (see her book Civilizing the Museum) did a brief but scholarly presentation outlining her ideas on museums, audiences, and inclusion. Bradford did a more conventional artist talk. His somewhat sketchy responses during the Q & A period that followed the presentations left me wondering just how this project would shape up, as he wasn't able to address how this project might shape and perhaps expand his own practice; he saw it more in light of what he could bring to the students.

That it did very much effect his thinking about his own practice was evident from the public program that took place some eight months after that first one, by which time Bradford had completed his residency. On stage with several of the students who participated in the project he acknowledged how profoundly he had been changed by the experience of working with them. They in turn acknowledged the respect with which he had treated them. This was apparent from the exhibition (Re)Collect that the students mounted of their work in a Pop Up gallery space in Chicago's downtown Loop. The show (on view for only one week!) provided ample evidence of the highly sophisticated formal, material, and conceptual work the students had done under Bradford's guidance. Professionally and smartly installed the work was a far cry from the "after school projects" level that some people still wrongly expect from young artists. The authoritative way in which they held forth in the standing room only program in MCA's auditorium only further reinforced the impact that this experience had on them. Bradford's own survey exhibition remains on view at MCA at this writing. The project is one that could serve as a model to those museums with enough self confidence to not feel that allowing the museum space to be a space of exchange diminishes the serious of the museum enterprise or somehow demeans the art objects themselves. Rather it acknowledges that the viewer has a place in the conversation that is as valuable as what the museum itself has to offer. The challenge is to find a way to enhance that conversation while respecting both the viewers and the objects.

This project represents another step in the evolution of this museum that began when Madeleine Grynsztejn became director four years ago. The exhibition immediately preceding Bradford's, "Without You I'm Nothing: Art and Its Audience," foregrounded works that required the active participation of the viewer in order to be activated or completed. This emphasizing of the viewer's position and relationship to the object set the stage for Bradford's extended project of community engagement. Significantly in choosing Bradford to undertake this project the museum was not making an obvious choice, choosing someone for whom--like Theaster Gates or Rirkrit Tiravanija--such engagement is endemic to their work and practice. Bradford is first and foremost a painter, a maker of nonrepresentational paintings. In spite of the social content and context underpinning and informing his work (which I feel is sometimes more rhetorical than present in the objects themselves), he is indeed a formalist, a maker of sometimes large scale, often atmospheric material objects. While he may be black, gay, from gritty South Central LA, and a recent MacArthur Fellow, his practice still would not make him an obvious candidate for such an ambitious project. That the project succeeded as well as it did bodes well for MCA, Bradford, the students, and all of those museums who might be looking to this as a successful model of how art and a broader civic engagement can meaningfully coexist. Indeed, MCA is in the midst of even more extensive changes, both physical and philosophical. One writer referred to these changes as, "a philosophical gut rehab." You can read about that here.

An Eighties Superstar Shapes A Public Project

Eric Fischl is not necessarily the first name that comes to mind if one is trying to think of an artist who has been engaged in a meaningful social practice. One of the superstars of the overheated art market of the 1980s, Fischl--along with Ross Bleckner, Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, Julian Schnabel, and others--came to represent the degree to which the economy of the art world was totally out of touch with the economic realities of most people's lives. With paintings selling for far more than the average person's annual salary, Fischl and other came to epitomize the worst excesses of the art world. That was then, this is now. Fischl is now spearheading an ambitious project to bring art to the masses. Dubbed "America: Now and Here," the project is designed to address what Fischl calls, "...an identity crisis in American culture." While I'm not sure that America's varied cultures are in crisis, the projects promises to be an interesting road show indeed. Consisting of up to six truck based roving museums displaying art and also bringing poetry, drama, film to various cities over the next two years, the venture is privately funded.

Artists include a number of past and present art world stalwarts such as Alex Katz, Laurie Anderson, Barbara Kruger, Ross Bleckner, Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Bill Viola, along with Mark Bradford, Lyle Ashton Harris, Fred Wilson, Glenn Ligon, Ellen Gallagher, Kay Walkingstick, and Jeanne Moutousammy-Ashe. Would that others like Moutoussamy-Ashe and Walkingstick, who are under-recognized even as they have been working steadily for decades had been included in this all star cavalcade of culture. Musicians include Lou Reed, Phillip Glass, and Roseanne Cash, and hopefully more diverse talent will leaven this group as well. There is a section of the project called Artist Corp, which will feature the works of young undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate art students. This should go some ways towards making the project a more inclusive one.

An ambitious undertaking indeed, though the idea of a mobile art experience is hardly new. But if this project can generate half the excitement it is claiming for itself, it should be able to add to the dialogue around art and greater civic engagement with the arts in a meaningful way. You can go to the project website to see when and if they will be coming to your town.

Photographs (from top): The Mark Bradford Project documentation, MCA Chicago; El Museo del Barrio, NY; MCA Chicago, Mark Bradford exhibition banner, Mia Wicklund photograph © MCA Chicago; Mark Bradford and student lay out work for (Re)Collect exhibition, Nathan Keay photograph © MCA Chicago; Installation view, (Re)Collect; Madeleine Grynsztejn, photograph by Mark Randozzo; Eric Fisch, photograph by Chester Higgins, Jr. courtesy The New York Times

The Artist as Institution Builder

The recent passing of Dr. Billy Taylor was marked by notices of his contribution to jazz music as both musician and advocate. Taylor, in addition to being a seminal jazz pianist, had sustained for over four decades a position as one of the music's most visible and preeminent spokespersons, having taken on the role of educator and institution builder among his numerous other accomplishments in the field. In all of the obituaries published on the occasion of his passing a little over a week ago, I was surprised to not read more about his role as the founder of the Jazz Mobile Workshop, since that was how I came to know Dr. Taylor.

Much has justly been written about his founding of the Jazz Mobile touring music program in the early 1960s. He developed this program in order to take jazz music directly into the community by way of a mobile stage which was attached to a truck. In a different context it might have been used as a parade float. Here it was used as a vehicle to bring free music of the highest quality into those communities who might be least exposed to it (given the decline of jazz as a popular music) and least able to afford it (given that the music was now largely played in clubs). During the summer the roving stage is set up in conspicuously public locations such as parks, and name musicians perform. It was a brilliant idea and one that persists to this day. It exists because of Dr. Billy Taylor.

But oddly, little if anything has been written about the Jazz Mobile Workshop, the free music education program that Taylor founded in 1969 as one of the organization's programs to continue perpetuating jazz music. Located in Harlem in Intermediate School 201 on West 127th Street, just off of Park Avenue, the Workshop provided free instrumental instruction on Saturday afternoon for any and all. Taylor had appointed the bassist Paul West as executive director. I first heard about the Workshop from a trumpet playing friend in my Queens, NY neighborhood, Phil Clark. Queens at that time seemed populated by a wealth of musicians, young and old, the benefit some have said of having basements and backyards to practice in, given that we all lived in houses, not apartments. Phil was, like us, a young musicians and had taken to showing up at the band rehearsals we used to have in first my parents living room then their basement. I'm not sure if one of the other band member knew him or if he heard us playing from out on the sidewalk (the whole neighborhood apparently could hear us), but Phil took to hanging around. I suspect he wanted to be asked to join the band, but bands are formed around compatible personalities as much as shared musical interests and skills, so Phil became a perennial hanger on. Besides, we already had a strong trumpet player in our band. To his credit however Phil mentioned to me one day that he was taking classes with Lee Morgan, the well known trumpeter. He was taking these classes, he said, free of charge on Saturdays at the Jazz Mobile Workshop in Harlem, NY.

Taking Phil up on an invitation to accompany him to the Jazz Mobile one Saturday afternoon shortly after, I was pleasantly astounded at what I found. Peering into one classroom door in Harlem's I.S. 201 public school building I recognized bassist Richard Davis. In another classroom I spotted saxophonist Jimmy Heath. And in still another I spied guitarist Ted Dunbar. I was a serious enough young scholar of the music by that point that I had seen all of these guys in performance, and heard them on recordings, so I knew they were the masters in the field. Continuing on I located the classroom for drum set instruction and entered the room. The teacher there in the introductory/intermediate drumming class was none other than Albert "Tootie" Heath. After several months in Heath's class I was promoted to Freddie Wait's advanced class after impressing Heath with a particularly fluid interpretation of a passage he had us all perform. Wait's prodigious classroom demonstrations both inspired me while, at the same time, convincing me that I had a very long way to go indeed if I was to make music my life's work...which I ultimately chose not to do, though I continued to play professionally in a number of bands for a few years. Dr. Taylor himself would visit the Workshop periodically. I had my most memorable experience with him one afternoon in the Small Ensemble class. He gathered us drummers together and, with himself on piano and a young Howard "Locksmith" King on bass, told us we were going to practice "trading threes." We each looked at each other quizzically. Most jazz musicians when they solo play four, eight or maybe twelve bars, and often trading "fours," that is soloing for four bars apiece back and forth. As such most musicians develop a repertoire of phrases they often--unwittingly or otherwise--resort to, which playing for an irregular three bars completely disrupts. By having us "trade threes" (soloing for three bars each instead of four) Taylor reminded us that true creativity and improvisation does not rely on habit. It was a lesson I never forgot.

Other musicians assembled by Dr. Taylor to teach at the Workshop included such luminaries as Curtis Fuller, Sir Roland Hanna, Joe Newman, and Ernie Wilkins. All were following Taylor's lead and making their time and knowledge available to yet another generation. All of this asignificant history, occurring in the pre-internet age, seemed to have escaped the notice of the many writers paying tribute to Dr. Taylor upon his passing. I would have expected former drummer turned cultural critic and gadfly Stanley Crouch to have taken note, but in his obituary in the New York Daily News Crouch spent an inordinate amount of space once again bashing hip hop and "ignorant" baggy pants folks in general, while doing little to pass on this important and seemingly little known aspect of Dr. Taylor's life's work. But Dr. Billy Taylor was that rare individual, a consummate artist who had the vision and the institutional savvy to create something that would outlast him and benefit seceding generations. For that we can all be grateful.

Passing the Torch Yet Again

Thinking about Dr. Billy Taylor and Jazz Mobile put me in mind of other artists who have taken on the hard task of institution building. The recently announced impending retirement of Judith Jamison, former principal dancer turned artistic director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, made me recall the formative history of that company and institution. Performing for the first time in 1958 with a company under his own name, Ailey went on to build a company with an almost unparalleled reputation, securing his first permanent home in 1979 after sharing a renovated church with choreographer Pearl Lang beginning in 1971. I was fortunate to see Judith Jamison dance "Cry" shortly after Ailey choreographed the dance--which he created as a birthday gift to his mother--for her in 1971. I saw (and photographed) Jamison dancing this piece and others a number of times, falling in love with her over and over again as she commanded the stage in this amazingly powerful piece de resistance of movement. Not too long afterward I did a portrait of her in the company's studio, and from that moment on swore that I would have followed her anywhere.

Upon Ailey's untimely death at 58 years of age in 1989, Jamison took over as Artistic Director of the company as Ailey had requested, putting to rest her own newly formed company The Jamison Project. She has grown the institution steadily since then, weathering the economic storms of keeping a both the main and junior companies active, while moving into its second new home, which is no small feat in these times of dwindling support for the arts. At one time in New York there were a wealth of black dance companies: Fred Benjamin Dance Company, Dianne McIntyre's Sounds in Motion, Otis Sallid Dance Company, Rod Rodgers Dance Company, Arthur Mitchell's Dance Theater of Harlem and others could be seen on stage with some regularity. I seldom missed a performance by either of these companies while living in New York. They were an important part of my creative sustenance. But slowly, over the years, they all but disappeared or disbanded, victims of the difficult task of keeping a large or medium sized company together. Some, like Sallid, found early success in the commercial entertainment arena, choreographing for television and motion pictures, and others were fortunate to find work in the academy. That the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater has been able to survive and thrive while hewing to its original artistic vision is a testament to its founder and its soon to be retired Artistic Director, Judith Jamison. Their lives and hard work should be an example to us all.

(Note: Hopefully in a future post I will write about Wynton Marsalis, who is yet another artist/musician who has done a significant and impressive job as an institution builder in bringing Jazz at Lincoln Center into being. This institution appears to be the first long term major home for the performing and ongoing preservation of one of America's original art forms, with an in-house repertory band and multiple performing venues contained within its home, located at Columbus Circle in New York City.)

Photographs (from top): Dr. Billy Taylor and youthful admirers; Freddie Waits (photograph © Tom Marcello); Alvin Ailey and Judith Jamison

"Degenerate Art Then and Now" or "America is Not Germany, 1937"

Recent Censorship Recalls Spirit of an Earlier Era

In 1936 Adolf Hitler, German Chancellor, instructed Adolf Ziegler, president of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, to put together an “exhibition of shame”, depicting the “deterioration of art since 1910”. Ziegler gathered a group of what were called “art inspectors” to trawl through the public museums and galleries. The committee compiled everything from some 100 art collections they considered useful for defaming the Modernist movement. The “Degenerate Art” (Entartete Kunst) exhibition opened on July 19, 1937 in Munich, organized by Josef Goebbel's Information Ministry, and was thereafter toured to numerous German cities until April 1941 to expose the alleged cultural decline of the Weimar Republic. In the course of this campaign, at least 21,000 art works produced by artists associated with Expressionism, Dadaism, Cubism, Fauvism, Surrealism and New Objectivity were removed from museums, and sold abroad to earn foreign exchange. Other works were simply destroyed.

In his speech at the exhibition’s opening in Munich, Hitler declared: “I swore that if Providence made me your leader, I’d make short work of this degeneration. The German people deserve to be protected from these sick minds. These abusers of beauty and art should be confined to secure asylums for the insane until they re-learn how to think as Germans.” Among those artists whose works were classified by the Nazis as “degenerate” were Käthe Kollwitz, Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, George Grosz and numerous others. Those who were less famous are now forgotten because their works were either lost or destroyed. Once so labeled, victimized artists were forbidden to make art; many emigrated to save their lives; others died in concentration camps or in gas chambers, or committed suicide.This odious moment in German and world history was brought alive again when eleven banned works of art were surreptitiously uncovered during an archeological excavation in Berlin in preparation for the planned extension of a subway line in that city. All of the recovered sculptures came from museums in Munich, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe and Berlin, from which the Nazis had confiscated them because the pieces did not correspond to the concept of art propagated by the fascist state. How they came to be at the site is not known, though several theories have emerged about the possible owner of the building hiding them for posterity's sake. Whatever the story, it reminds us that indeed "truth pressed to earth shall [indeed] rise again," and often at fortuitous moments. It is up to us to pay attention and make the connections.

The rediscovery of the formerly banned "degenerate" art from Germany coincided with the very moment of the recent controversy in Washington, DC concerning the censoring of the David Wojnarowicz video "A Fire in My Belly" at the National Portrait Gallery. There is much to be learned from the former as far as what the American response should be to in response the efforts of politicians and officers of the state to once again attempt to create and impose a national standard insofar as what constitutes acceptable art. The exhibition "The Berlin Sculpture Find" opened at Berlin's New Museum on November 9th. "A Fire in My Belly" was removed from the Smithsonian on November 30th. The timing could not have been more auspicious, though no one seemed to have linked the two events. Lurking there in the news, uncovered from the dirt in Berlin, lying in plain sight, was history's loud rebuke to John Boehner.

The Art World: In Search of A Script

One of the reasons (perhaps the most significant reason) that the right is able to be so effective in propagating its message in the public arena has to do with the consistency of the script from which they all perform and hold forth. It is the uniform and persistent tone of their running commentary that adds up to a din that is always heard above the whisper of more reasoned discourse. To wit, neither House Speaker designate John Boehner nor incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor bothered to go and actually see the exhibition in question, "Hide/Seek," before issuing their pronouncements condemning the exhibition. They had received their script from the Christian News Service, a news service that apparently trolls the national social, cultural and political landscape in search of things it deems offensive to its sensibilities. They then alerts their reliable foot soldiers who then go forth to faithfully parrot the CNS script. That they were able to make the Smithsonian shake in its boots and pull the "offending" work should demonstrate the power of a few consistent voices staying on script and creating the perception that they speak for legions of presumed supporters when in fact they never do. The fact that the exhibition had been open for over a month and seen by over 10,000 people who didn't raise any complaints? Doesn't matter apparently, since we still have not heard from those 10,000 unified voices that they don't appreciate politicians who attempt (successfully it would seem) to impose their own parochial opinions on the American people. Thus does the vocal minority hold sway.

Response from the art community to this recent attack on fundamental American rights has certainly not approached anything resembling a similarly coherent script. Rather the response has been largely to approach this as an attack on gay art and artists, an attack on one artist (David Wojnarowicz), or an attack on one institution (the National Portrait Gallery). All miss the point...perilously. Boehner and Cantor's attack constitutes an attack against the American people and our fundamental rights...not because we are gay, not because some of us make art using religious iconography, and not because of the facts of race, gender, sexuality or any of the other myriad reasons bigots have discriminated against others. What makes such discrimination abhorrent is that it violates basic rights and protections that are presumed to come with citizenship. It is an offense because it violates fundamental rights that make us very different from Nazi Germany in the 1930 and 40s. No, we Americans simply do not roll like that! We have something called the Constitution which guarantees our freedom of expression. And unlike totalitarian societies, we also reserve the right to make up our own minds, not to have these decisions left to agents of the state. And that is something around which we can find common ground with our fellow citizens, including those who may not even care about the Wojnarowicz video, or forward looking art in general. Indeed we are citizens before we are artists. Don't think so? Take a look at your passport and see what it says.

So while demonstrations which attract a smattering of the already converted are justifiable immediate responses and screening the banned piece in various institutions may be seen as an act of solidarity and defiance, it doesn't constitute a coherent response; it's not a script that can be sent out to all concerned parties. We need to remind everyone that it is not only the arts that are under attack; the arts do indeed represent the culture of the larger society. The writer James Baldwin, in An Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Davis said that, "...if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night." If we in the art community want a script (and we badly need one) I would suggest the following: "An attack on art is an attack on all Americans." John Boehner and his ilk falsely and loudly purport to speak for some presumably outraged citizenry. We need to remind him--and others--that indeed we are those citizens. January--and the ascent of Boehner and Cantor--is just around the corner. They have put us on notice that they will be watching, waiting to make their versions of "degenerate art" disappear. What will our response be this time? Whatever it is it cannot be in the form of a million passionate voices speaking individually (though rightly). We need a coherent voice. We--urgently--need a script.

An Open Letter from Carrie Mae Weems

and Others on the Censorship by the Smithosonian

December 16, 2010

As artists and citizens, we are outraged by the censorship rearing its head in our nation. In a country founded on freedom of expression – the First Amendment – we find it shocking and senseless that some amongst us would deny the rest of us by silencing any voice they deem “different” or “other.” Dissent is a right that has been bought and paid for by the American people. Disagreement is the cornerstone of democracy. A great nation is represented as much by its art and artists as by its statesmen and women. As artists and citizens, we will not be bullied by blind bigots, silenced by fear, or denied our basic civil rights.

On December 1, World AIDS day, G. Wayne Clough, secretary of the Smithsonian, without consulting curator Jonathan Katz, removed “A Fire In My Belly,” a video piece by artist David Wojnarowicz, from the current exhibition “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.” Catholic League president Bill Donahue, with the support of incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner, exerted pressure on the Smithsonian. Even though this piece had been on view since October 30 without complaint, Donahue and company claimed this four-minute video is “anti-Christian hate speech” and a waste of taxpayer money. In short, the Smithsonian caved.

Since then public outcry has built across the nation. As citizens, we realize that censoring work in a Washington, D.C. museum violates us all. We understand that this is not an isolated instance. We understand that the real targets go far beyond a four-minute video—to arts funding, to stigmatizing free expression and open dialog, to demonizing gay culture in all its forms. This fear-mongering and distortion is what is truly un-American, and it’s unacceptable.

On December 14, in the midst of an upstate freezing blizzard, people gathered to attend an emergency screening of “A Fire in My Belly” held by ArtRage Gallery and Light Work in Syracuse. Both Light Work Gallery at Syracuse University and ArtRage Gallery will now continuously screen the work until February 13, the slated closing date of “Hide/Seek.” And we are not the only ones. What you can no longer see in our nation’s capitol you can now see in cities and towns across the land.

Day by day, and decade by decade, social and cultural liberties have come under attack, disrupting our nation’s progress and the very vitality of our scientists, intellectuals and artists. At every turn we are losing ground with cuts in funding and the dismantling of cultural programs and significant institutions large and small. And this must stop! We are counting on all US representatives who care about fairness and freedom to protect and to defend the First Amendment at all costs. We invite others to join us in this protest. For more information go to Hideseek.org and PPOWgallery.com.

Carrie Mae Weems and Social Studies 101

Mary Goodwin, Associate Director, Light Work

Nancy Keefe Rhodes

Rose Viviano, Director, ArtRage Gallery

Photographs (from top): Installation view of "Entartete Kunst", the "Degenerate Art" Exhibition; cover of catalogue from the "Entartete Kunst" exhibition; viewer looks at recovered art at Berlin's New Museum (photograph courtesy of Art Daily newsletter); demonstration in New York, protesting the Smithsonian censorship (photograph © 2010 by Daniella Zalcman); "A Fire in My Belly" being screened at The New Museum, NY (photography courtesy of The New Museum)

The Culture Wars version 2010-11 Begin

John Boehner Fires the Opening Salvo

I had the rather auspicious fortune to be in Washington, DC for several days this past week when the opening salvo of a new round in the Culture Wars was fired by Congressman John Boehner. Boehner's ire had been raised when he was contact by Catholic League president William Donohue after Donohue had issued a press release regarding what he called, "the vile video that showed large ants crawling all over Jesus on the Cross." In light of what he considered to be the blaspheming of the Christian religion by a public institution Donohue asked that the House and Senate Appropriations Committees "reconsider future funding" for the National Portrait Gallery, who had included the video in question "A Fire In My Belly" by the late artist David Wojnarowicz in its exhibition "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture." Donohue is, of course, no stranger to uninformed highly inflammatory public remarks. Among other things he has previously blamed the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal on homosexuality and claimed that a number of individuals previously and continually abused by priests when they were young were in fact not abused; since they repeatedly allowed the abuse to take place they must have enjoyed it according to Donohue. So we should not be surprised that this self appointed religious watchdog is again rabidly on the attack.

I was in Washington ironically enough serving as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency who had come under attack two decades earlier from Senator Jesse Helms and other conservative religious groups and politicians for having given funds to an institution that had exhibited Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ," a large scale color photograph of a crucifix submerged in glowing yellow liquid. From Christ in urine to Christ with ants, the connection was an uncanny one. The National Portrait Gallery furor indeed echoes the controversy surrounding the exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe's work at the Corcoran Gallery (also in Washington, DC) in 1989, an exhibition which was closed after conservative intimidation and then mounted by the WPA Gallery, also located in DC. The Endowment itself was subsequently eviscerated by increasing funding cuts and its individual artist program--which also came under severe conservative scrutiny--was eliminated entirely. The arts have been vulnerable and drawn apart from the larger society ever since. As an artist who lived through that earlier moment the eerie feeling of déja vu was unmistakable and unnerving.

On the first day of business during an extended lunch break, on the recommendation of Endowment staff, I decided to visit the National Portrait Gallery to take in the exhibitions, including "Hide Seek." Little did I know that it was the very day in which the Wojnarowicz video work had been removed from the exhibition. I sensed that something was up because the overzealous security guards appeared to be on high alert when I arrived in the exhibition space. Unlike the other exhibitions I had passed through, the gallery containing the show seemed staffed by a few museum guards too many, one of whom seemed to always appear, hovering too nearby as I moved around through the exhibition. My first thought upon taking in the work was that this was decidedly unlike any exhibition I had ever seen at the NPG before. An accompanying exhibition "The Struggle for Justice" (which one passes through on the way to the "Hide/Seek" show) was equally provocative. Indeed it was that show, with its incisive texts panels, that first clued me in to the fact that this was a very different kind of NPG, one with a more revisionist and inclusive reading of the many objects it was showing, particularly those of the modern and contemporary eras.

Looking at a portrait of the blues singer Bessie Smith (one of a large group of African American portraits made by Carl Van Vechten that I am very familiar with) I proceeded to read the accompanying wall text: "Van Vechten's descriptions of African Americans were of the romantic racist variety, in which they represented elemental and primitive qualities absent in the falsity of modern society. Yet in his photographs he recovered and preserved the dignity and humanity of people such as the great blues singer Bessie Smith..." Well, I'll be! What a straightforward critical dissection of one man's varied intent. Other labels introduced a similar level of criticality into ones encounter with the works. Strategically placed near the small and elegant portrait of Smith is an imposing portrait painting of Van Vechten by Romaine Brooks, here brought down to a more manageable and humanly imperfect size by the aforementioned text which separates Van Vechten from Smith. It appeared to be yet another institutional situation where younger and more critically responsive and ambitious curators were being allowed to step forward and shape the viewing experience and rewrite art and cultural history in less than benign ways. So I was primed by the time I moved on to the next gallery where "Hide/Seek" was installed.

Entering the gallery I immediately located a number of works by artist friends, including Lyle Ashton Harris, Catherine Opie, and Glenn Ligon along with works by artists ranging from Duane Michals, Keith Haring, Nan Goldin, Beauford Delaney, Paul Cadmus, Agnes Martin, Charles Demuth, Thomas Eakins (whose Salutat graced the exhibition entrance wall), Berenice Abbott, Marsden Hartley and others from both the modern and contemporary eras. Wojnarowicz was represented too, both in his own self portrait photograph (Untitled/face in dirt) and in Peter Hujar's portrait of him. And while much of the work was familiar, it was here contextualized in ways that foregrounded what had long been left out of the discourse surrounding the work: the sexuality identity of either the artist, the subjects or both, and the ways in which the work simultaneously embodied an aesthetic of both the object and the sexualized self; identity here became as much subject as the actual and nominal subject of the work itself creating a much richer and provocative experience of these objects. It was a lively, freewheeling, and thoughtful show, with the theme of difference and desire providing a thematic anchor that allowed it to hang together coherently. Indeed it was the lifting of the veil of sexual identity--particularly with the earlier works that had seldom been thus contextualized--that provided the rationale for the show itself to be brought into existence. As such co-curators Jonathan Katz and David Ward have produced a long overdue breakthrough exhibition.

And then came William Donohue, roused by a story about the exhibition from CNS (Conservative News Service). After being duly alerted incoming House Speaker Boehner and incoming House Majority leader Eric Cantor proceeded to issue their own separate but consistent hyperbolic and opportunistic statements...without either one having ever having once set foot in the museum or the exhibition, which neither seemed to have thought an odd thing, as if having and airing opinions about things one hasn't actually experienced is the norm. Said Boehner, "American families have a right to expect better from recipients of taxpayer funds in a tough economy. Smithsonian officials should either acknowledge the mistake and correct it, or be prepared to face tough scrutiny beginning in January when the new majority in the House moves to end the job-killing spending spree in Washington.” Cantor followed up with, “This is an outrageous use of tax payer money and an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season,” said Cantor. “When a museum receives taxpayer money, the taxpayers have a right to expect that the museum will uphold common standards of decency. The museum should pull the exhibit and be prepared for serious questions come budget time.” The Smithsonian's Secretary G. Wayne Clough then responded to this attack by removing the offending video from the exhibition, with the consent of NPG's director Paul Martin, saying that it was creating an unnecessary distraction that was taking attention away from the rest of the exhibition. Director Martin himself issued a statement attempting to explain the true nature of the exhibition and offering reassurance that nothing more would be removed from the exhibition, which continues through February. So with this attack by the right and the tepid response on the part of the museum the next round of the culture wars--and the unfortunately muted instiutional terms of engagement--were initiated.

I found all of this out when I opened my hotel room door the morning after my visit to the museum and picked up The Washington Post laying on the floor in the hallway. Reading the front page article by Post art critic Blake Gopnik (who has done a very admirable job in continuing to report this story while bringing a high degree of critical acumen and much needed perspective to the conversation) over breakfast the palpable tension at NPG the previous day now made sense. I wondered too what the art world response would be. Other than Gopnik, who seemed to fully grasp at once the full dimension of this attack, public response was initially oddly muted in relation to the level of the offense. Into this breach stepped Transformer Gallery, a small Washington, DC alternative space headed by Victoria Reis. With perhaps 100 square feet of exhibition space and a window "project" space to their name, Transformer didn't let its small size stop them, becoming "the little gallery that could." While others dithered (cowered?), Transformer immediately sent out a call to action, asking supporters of the arts community to assemble at the gallery on Thursday evening to march in silent protest to the National Portrait Gallery where a vigil would be held. They also started a continuous screening of the banned video in their window, vowing to keep showing it in a continuous loop until the NPG reinstates it in the show. Their call to arms resulted in approximately seventy-five artists and others meeting at the gallery for the evening march to the NPG. I was there at the announced 5:30 assembly time as people slowly arrived. Picking up a few others along the way, the group eventually numbered maybe 100 by the time we had marched from 14th and P Street to 7th and G, the front of the National Portrait Gallery. With news cameras, reporters, and photographers bearing witness the silent vigil was held.

So what happens next? That is the big and most meaningful question. The Republicans have let it be known that the arts are once again squarely in their sights. They intend to once again isolate the arts community from the rest of the larger social community, making them out to be the odd and perverse miscreants of society, rather than as much a part of the social fabric as everyone else. That is why it is imperative that this assault be framed not as merely an assault on the arts or an attack on a particular institution. It needs to be loudly proclaimed for what it is: an all out assault on the American people. The exhibition had been seen by over 10,000 people without a single complaint before it became the latest political football to be kicked around. Yet Boehner and his ilk do not believe that the American people have the wherewithal to determine for themselves what they do or don't want to see. They would make themselves the self appointed de facto curators of the American creative and intellectual imagination. There can be no "us" and "them" this time. That is what Boehner and the conservative right are attempting to do, to divide the American people along their own self serving fault line. It is no coincidence that this assault is taking place at the very same moment that Washington is wavering on repealing "don't ask don't tell" in the military. As long as any of us can be made to appear to be less than a part of the American family none of us are safe. That is the only story. Let's hope the art community gets it right this time and doesn't participate in its own self isolation. We need to assert our rights as Americans, not merely as artists. In that way we leave no loose threads in the social fabric for Boehner, Cantor, and Donohue to then use to rip us apart from our neighbors, doing the ongoing dirty conservative work of divide and conquer. The right speaks with one voice and from one script; we need to start doing the same.

Statement from the Association of Art Museum Directors on the NPG Censorship Imbroglio

The Association of Art Museum Directors, which oversees practices in North American museums and develops guidelines for art museums, issued a response Friday to the controversy at the National Portrait Gallery.

The Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution, removed a video from its current exhibition "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture" on Tuesday after it received protests about its content from Capitol Hill, Catholic and conservative critics. The video by the late artist David Wojnarowicz contained an 11 minute view of ants crawling on a Christ-like figure. Local artists have marched outside the museum to show their disapproval of the action.

The AAMD statement said: "It is extremely regrettable that the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery, a major American art museum with a long history of public service in the arts, has been pressured into removing a work of art from its exhibition "Hide/Seek."

"More disturbing than the Smithsonian's decision to remove this work of art is the cause: unwarranted and uninformed censorship from politicans and other public figures, many of whom, by their own admission, have seen neither the exhibition as a whole or this specific work.

"The AAMD believes that freedom of expression is essential to the health and welfare of our communities and our nation. In this case, that takes the form of the rights and opportunities of art museums to present works of art that express different points of view.

"Discouraging the exchange of ideas undermines the principles of freedom of expression, plurality and tolerance on which our nation was founded. This includes the forcible withdrawal of a work of art from within an exhibition--and the threatening of an institution's funding sources.

"The Smithsonian Institution is one of the nation's largest organizations dedicated to the dissemination and diffusion of knowledge--an essential element of democracy in America. We urge members of Congress and the public to continue to sustain and support the Smithsonian's activities, without the political pressure that curtails freedom of speech."

Photographs (from top): Demonstration at National Portrait Gallery, photograph © Jacquelyn Martin/AP; House Majority Leader designate John Boehner; the late Senator Jesse Helms; installation view, "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture;" "Bessie Smith" by Carl Van Vechten, courtesy Library of Congress; Lyle Ashton Harris, "Brotherhood, Crossroads, Etcetera," © Lyle Ashton Harris; Bill Donohue, courtesy CNN; Transformer Gallery, photograph © Jacquelyn Martin/AP