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