Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture is the first major museum exhibition to address gay and lesbian identity in the arts, an exhibition of 105 works spanning over 100 years. “This is an exhibition that displays masterpieces of American portraiture and we wanted to illustrate how questions of biography and identity went into the making of images that are canonical,” says David C. Ward, a National Portrait Gallery historian.
Portrait of Ross, by Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Hide/Seek wasn’t controversial to any of the National Portrait Gallery’s visitors until CNSNews, a news site posting the stories that “the liberal media doesn’t want you to read” posted a descriptive story detailing the sexually exploratory pieces. Naturally, when dealing with the sensitive, subjective nature of art, the first move when confronted with novelty is to immediately send a press release to the following politicians asking: Should this exhibit continue or be cancelled? CNS sent a note to…
- House Speaker-to-be John Boehner (R-Ohio)
- House Majority Leader-to-be Eric Cantor (R.-Va.)
- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.
- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.)
- House Minority Leader-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.)
- Jim Clyburn (D.-S.C.), the third-ranking Democrat in the House
Boehner and Cantor moved to hit the panic button; the other four have not responded at this time.
Scary art make the head explody
From CNS:
“American families have a right to expect better from recipients of taxpayer funds in a tough economy,” Boehner’s Spokesman Kevin Smith told CNSNews.com. “While the amount of money involved may be small, it’s symbolic of the arrogance Washington routinely applies to thousands of spending decisions involving Americans’ hard-earned money at a time when one in every 10 Americans is out of work and our children’s future is being threatened by debt.
“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,” Smith said.
While the Smithsonian’s building maintenance is partially sponsored by taxpayer funds, exhibits are funded by donations from individuals or institutions. The pressure of potentially slashed funding and intense audits in a depressed economy caused the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery to buckle and remove a work by David Wojnarowicz, a video piece featuring an image of a crucifix with ants crawling on it.
Here’s their excuse: Martin Sullivan, director of the National Portrait Gallery, released the following statement:
“One work, a four-minute video portrait by artist David Wojnarowicz (1987), shows images that may be offensive to some….I regret that some reports about the exhibit have created an impression that the video is intentionally sacrilegious. In fact, the artist’s intention was to depict the suffering of an AIDS victim. It was not the museum’s intention to offend. We are removing the video today.”
National Portrait Gallery historian and exhibit co-curator David C. Ward describes the video: “’Fire in My Belly’ is an example of political engagement in artistic form with the AIDS epidemic by an artist deeply concerned with the exploration of our response to that medical and societal calamity. That it is violent, disturbing, and hallucinatory precisely replicates the impact of the disease itself on people and a society that could barely comprehend its magnitude.”
Note that the video below isn’t the same edit as the video removed from the National Portrait Gallery.
As Millennials age into adulthood, America’s getting closer to mainstream acceptance of civil unions, the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”, and acknowledgment of equal rights for GLBT adults and youth. Progressive, inclusive thinking on a mass scale isn’t a fad or trend. It’s inevitable. However, it takes all kinds to make up the world, and there will always be a division of humans into two camps: a group willing to explore, create, and progress, and a group enamored of tradition and inhibited by fear of novelty. Sunnis versus Shiites. Martin Luther versus the Catholic Church. Electric cars versus traditional gasmobiles.
The great debate of a stupid, stupid generation
Here’s why existence of opposing groups, one open to change, and one determined to follow tradition, is pertinent. Censors claim the timing of the show is poised to mock Christians, as the show runs throughout the Christmas season. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor calls Hide/Seek an “outrageous use of taxpayer money and an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season…. taxpayers have a right to expect that the museum will uphold common standards of decency.”
Catholic League President Bill Donohue is concerned that “the government is underwriting this assault on Christian sensibilities calculated to offend during the Christmas season.” Clearly, these men in positions of power see this exhibit exploring sexuality as attacks on the status quo. And, in fact, the pieces of art hanging on the walls, being viewed by thousands of “liberal” novelty-seeking eyes were not attacks—they were conversations with the viewers. But when CNS removed context and sent second-party descriptions of the concepts as assaults on tradition, the art comprising the exhibit transformed into literal statements of evolving human socialization. In this new context, these concepts revealed a new power to evoke fear and anger in established leaders of the old school.
We shall have Pizza Hut on Fridays, turkey on Thanksgiving, and that is final!
Hide/Seek is indeed confrontational. It is exploratory and brave. The Smithsonian is an institute that exists to foster discussion (by viewing art) of culture, life, and humanity. Culture is created by the creative– by artists, doers, thinkers–those who document and redefine the society of America. When we don’t allow free thinkers a safe place to question, we are stifling the future. The accusation that a recession is not the time to fund wildly divergent art is absolutely incorrect. In a recession, we need hope. We need new ideas to spark fresh thought and change the direction of our country, while we feel the burn of a failed system. It definitely wasn’t an art show that caused the housing bust and depressed the American economy.
This debate strikes deeply because the censored artist is a personal favorite of mine. David Wojnarowicz is deceased. He made ferociously intelligent, beautiful, transcendent art in multiple mediums, skewering the type of society that allows heteronormative, powerful males to declare Christianity a “No Criticism Zone.” I’m sad that a voice as strong and clear as his is being dismissed as provocative for the sake of provocation. He had multiple strikes against him as a gay man, street hustler, and ultimately AIDS victim, but overcame anonymity and the money-money old school culture of “ART” through force of will, sheer creative output, and smarts. He’s a hero for the powerless and marginalized, translating his reality to the visceral via art. In another dimension, his face is plastered, Che Guevara-style, on millions of T-shirts, cute shoulder bags, and dorm room posters.
Please learn more about David Wojnarowicz and his art, which has illustrated this entire post. Use this moment as an opportunity to expose his brutally sensitive explorations of life and death. David scraped his soul apart to show us his reality and dreams, despite opposition and the majority’s fear of evolution.
As a final note, how vindictive is it that an artist who so honestly detailed the isolation and pain he felt as he died of AIDS is censored, postmortem, the week of World AIDS Day 2010?
Creation is bravery. Censorship is fear.