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James Baldwin New Orleans, 1963 |
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16th Street Baptist Church on the morning of the bombing |
Sarah Collins in the hospital after the bombing Photograph by Frank Dandridge |
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Odessa Woolfolk Courtesy The Birmingham News |
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From top left (clockwise) Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Denise McNair, and Addie Mae Collins |
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16th Street Baptist Church |
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Taylor Branch Parting The Waters |
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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Birmingham, AL 1963 |
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Virgil Ware 13 years old |
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Filming in Birmingham, AL Photograph by Truman Grayson |
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Photographing in the Birmingham Museum of Art Photograph by Truman Grayson |
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Photographing in original Bethel Baptist Church Sanctuary Photograph by Truman Grayson |
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
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
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.
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
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.
I was introduced by Robert Storr, artist, curator and Dean of Yale University School of Art. I had met Rob many years ago at a bon voyage party at his home given for a mutual friend. He had just begun his stint as curator at the Museum of Modern Art at that time and we were Brooklyn neighbors. I would leave New York to start grad school at Yale one year later, in 1991. Rob became School of Art dean in 2006. He's a former University of Chicago Lab School kid and School of the Art Institute of Chicago MFA grad. In his brief remarks to the graduates preceding my remarks Rob reminded the students that there is "a lot of bad energy out there in the art world," and that they would do well to avoid these negative seductions as they began their own careers. Our remarks, taken together, hopefully inspired sober but inspired reflection for the assembled graduating class. My brief remarks follow:
"Thank you for that kind introduction Rob. A very warm thank you to those of you who invited me here today to address this graduating class. It's a real pleasure to be back. I’d like to congratulate the graduating class and all of the family and friends who are gathered here today to celebrate with you. Before I continue, I’d like to dedicate my remarks this afternoon to Richard Benson, former dean of the School of Art, one of my professors during my time here in the Graduate Photography program and one of the most brilliant and decent human beings I have had the pleasure to know. I want to ask all of you in the graduating class to stand and give a warm shout out to Chip, who couldn’t be here with us today.
Of course I remember well the feeling that those of you graduating from this institution and the School of Art are feeling today. I was certainly proud of what I had accomplished in moving my work forward, glad to have been surrounded by some of the best minds one could study and work with for two years, pleased to have formed a community of support and, quite frankly, scared half out of my mind! The nervousness mixed with anticipation that you are feeling is understandable, since you are indeed at the end of one journey and at the beginning—or the continuation—of another. What I would like to share with you today is my own sense of how you might go about both alleviating that nervousness and thinking about your place in society as artists at this particular moment in the 21st century.
Once you leave here you will be faced with a number of decisions and choices that you will have to make. Certainly you will be faced with the need to continue your work, even as you are confronted with the realities of having to somehow sustain that practice at a moment of real economic uncertainty. Making art has never been—as far as I know—the safest or easiest career choice. It’s one thing to do this when you are very young without any real responsibilities to shoulder and another make a serious commitment to this as a vocation rather than an avocation. So it should go without saying that making art is a real act of faith. And your faith is about to be seriously tested once you leave here. Now I have not come here today to make you any more nervous about your possible futures than you might already be. Rather I want to encourage you to believe that your work not only should continue, but that it is imperative and that it needs to exist in the world. You each need to continue to believe that your work matters and that through your work you have the ability to change and reshape the world one person or one viewer at a time and to continue to expand your own sense of who you are in the process.
Now you might think that this is an overly ambitious agenda I am proposing here, but it is the only agenda to have if you are going to continue along your chosen path. Indeed it is your responsibility to reshape the way the world is experienced through each encounter with your work. The viewer leaving your work has the potential to go back out into the world with new information, new perceptions, new ideas, and by extension a transformed worldview. And hopefully you too will find out something about the world through your own work and feed that back into the world through your own subjectivities. If we are to ensure that our work actually thrives in the world, then we need to be prepared to have a much broader conversation, a conversation that embraces the larger world that we live in, not just the marketplace of the art world.
In the past we in the art community have sometimes paid a heavy price for ignoring that larger world and living inside of an insulated aesthetic bubble that excluded the larger social community. The so-called Culture Wars of the 1980s was a moment in which the art world and the larger social world found themselves on opposite ends of a great divide, viewing each other with mutual hostility and animosity. Opportunistic politicians exploited these tensions. It didn’t have to be that way, and we can’t afford to let it be that way now. Some of you will be leaving here to return to the communities you left two years ago. Others will be continuing on to become part of new and different communities. Wherever you are going I encourage you to return to those communities not only as artists, but as citizens. I am not asking you to be a social worker, but to consider what it means to be an artist in the fullest sense and how your presence in those communities can be part of a meaningful and necessary dialogue that can both enliven the civic conversation and provide opportunities for your work to embed itself in the social fabric.
Hopefully while you’ve been here these past two years you have also formed a community of support with each other. Contrary to what some might think, no one gets there—wherever there is--on their own; there is no lone genius who makes a solitary breakthrough without a supportive and sometimes challenging community of peers with whom to engage in an ongoing critical conversation. Each of you have that opportunity to encourage and to sustain each other. Embrace it. There is room for more than one person at a time at the table of opportunity.
Speaking of opportunities, it is clear that the current economic climate demands that some of the opportunities you are seeking are going to have to be ones that you yourselves create—not only for yourself, but indeed for each other. Recently in Philadelphia I spent some time with Sarah Stolfa, who came out of the graduate photography program here just two years ago. Along with another recent MFA graduate from Syracuse University she started the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, an exhibition space that also provides rental digital facilities for area photographers as well as classes and workshops for others. These two artists have not only created positions for themselves, but have created a much- needed resource for other photo-based artists in that city. I did a benefit book signing for them while I was there and look forward to returning at some point to continue supporting their efforts. Think about what you can do to build and sustain community with each other where you are. It is going to be an increasing necessity, one that you should welcome. So much of my career has been possible only through relationships that span many years, relationships in which I have applauded and sustained the work of others even as they have supported me. And it can be this way for you as well.
I would encourage you to maintain your relationship with this institution as well and make it a part of your community of support. It may have felt at times like they were giving you a serious beat down up in here, but in reality you have been challenged these past two years as a way of preparing you to continue to challenge yourself over the life of your careers as artists. When people ask me what I most remember about my time here I tell them that this School exemplifies a strong work ethic. I believe that as artists we think by making things. The more things one makes the more you are able to work through the challenges of giving coherent and interesting form to your ideas. That rigor and that work ethic will serve you well as you continue on your path as artists. I know it has served me well. I couldn’t stop making work even if I wanted to. I’m afraid Tod Papageorge would belatedly decide to retroactively kick me out of the program. And so I keep working.
Yes, you will each have your School of Art war stories to tell; stories about how you were ripped to shreds during a particularly brutal crit. But it will make sense when you hit a rough spot, as we all do, or when you are in your studio thinking of tossing in the towel perhaps, and you hear and feel that nagging internal voice pushing you to keep going and to figure it out one more time. You will hopefully realize then why you were pushed so hard. There is no quick or clever hustle that will sustain you, no one you can meet whose connections will allow you to not have to put in the long hours producing something of substance.
So, being an artist is a profound act of faith. I hope that each of you will keep that faith as you go forward, finding your own way to reshape the world around you and to continue to affirm that the work we do as artists can and does matter. It’s up to you to make it so, and I know that you will.
Thank you."
(Yale School of Art graphic © Paul Rand)
Thanks for you memories of your experience with Jazzmobile.
ReplyDeleteI always looked forward to the Jazzmobile coming to my hometown of Rochester each Summer.
I'm glad you could use my photo of the great Freddie Waits.
Best,
Tom Marcello
Manager / Joe Locke
Very nice article, thanks.
ReplyDelete