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)

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Birmingham on My Mind

September 15, 1963 - Fifty Years Later

One night, many years ago, a book appeared in my suburban Jamaica, NY home. My parents had attended a lecture that James Baldwin had given at our church, Calvary Baptist Church, and had returned with the book in hand. While the church never struck me as a particularly activist one, our minister, Rev. Walter S. Pinn, had let it be known on more than one occasion that he had marched besides Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There was a small black and white photograph hanging in the church vestibule that proudly and permanently testified to that fact. Most likely my folks purchased the book after Baldwin's talk as part of SNCC's fundraising efforts.
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On The Passing of Two Giants

This has been a difficult month, what with the loss of poet and activist Louis Reyes Rivera, and even more recently the esteemed artist Elizabeth Catlett. Both Rivera and Catlett were artists who were unabashedly forthright in their adherence to the cause of social justice, and equally as forthright in their adherence to practicing at the highest level of of their respective art forms.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A Different Kind of MoMA?

On a recent trip to New York I had one of those rare epiphany like moments where I found myself standing in front of a group of works that spoke clearly to how the work we do as artists might actually matter in the world. Such was the impact of this show on me that almost every other exhibition I saw both before and after in those three days came to feel almost meaningless, like so much empty, aestheticized and useless decoration.

National Endowment for the Arts chair Rocco Landesman was in Chicago recently, holding a series of meetings, gatherings, and conversations with various institutions and the arts community.

I was the speaker at the Yale University School of Art Commencement this past Monday. The School of Art ceremony followed the school wide ceremony on the Old Campus where, among others, Aretha Franklin fittingly received an honorary Doctor of Music degree. The feeling of well earned and shared accomplishment was palpable walking amongst the families of the graduates, and I was reminded yet again of the hard work and sacrifice that these moments are invested with.
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Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey
Photo © by Jason Smikle
About Me
About Me
Chicago, IL, United States
I began making photographs in 1969 after seeing the "Harlem On My Mind" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had inherited my first camera the year before from my godfather Artie Miller when I was fifteen years old. I began my first project "Harlem, USA" as a direct result of that exhibition and my own family's history in the Harlem community. Born in Queens, NY my formal training began by apprenticing to local commercial and fashion photographer Levy J. Smith and then later studying at the School of Visual Arts with Larry Siegel, William Broecker, Shelley Rice and Sid Kaplan. I completed my undergraduate work at Empire State College under the guidance of Mel Rosenthal and Joe Goldberg and did my MFA at Yale University in the graduate photography program under the watchful and rigorous eyes of Tod Papageorge and Richard Benson, along with Lois Conner, Frank Gohlke, Susan Kismaric and Joel Sternfeld. Classes with Robert Farris Thompson and Michael Romer significantly rounded out my graduate work. A former Guggenheim and NEA fellow, I am currently Professor of Art and Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago, where I have taught since 1998.
"What's Going On?"
"What's Going On?"
Marvin Gaye's signature song "What's Going On?"--a musical critique of a world gone off track--provides an apt framework for looking at the role of art and cultural production in the larger society.

With so much art being made at all ends of the market, it's always a good thing for artists to look both forward and back in trying to access the role that art can play in a larger society, a society that actually exists largely outside of the distorting bubble of the Art World. When one of my students recently answered the question of why she was in school in an MFA program with, "So I can be a part of the system," I knew it was time for a reassessment and a forum from which to look at the various histories in my own little corner of the art and "real" world.

Artists used to be the ones who led the charge to challenge the system; they were the proverbial "fly in the buttermilk," the monkey wrench that mucked up the system and made it act, function, and exist in new ways. Artists were the ones who created paradigms of everything the system was not. James Baldwin once said, "Artists are here to disturb the peace."

This blog will range freely over a range of issues, highlighting individuals, events, and ideas that provide a catalyst for thought and reflection. Hopefully for younger artists it might provide a sense of a world both in and outside of the so-called art world, and hopefully provoke a conversation about the relationship between the two while offering a thought or two about just what ones work might be about as one attempts to engage both history and the contemporary moment.

For others this blog might serve as a window into how one particular artist, after three decades of practice, sees and thinks about the vast world of human social and aesthetic experience. Consider this my own small commentary or my brain periodically laid bare for your perusal and consideration.

Feel free to use the "Comments" button to share your thoughts and responses if so provoked.
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