Tardy reply to Mac West re the curtailed Library of Congress
exhibition: I have a clipping file on this incident because of my
interest in issues of censorship, free speech, institutional cowardice,
etc. Washington Post articles indicated that the ostensible reason LC
staff objected to the exhibition was the content (including imagined
content), but that the objections were exacerbated by poor
management-staff relationships. One photograph reportedly upset an
employee because it allegedly showed a white overseer with a rifle,
guarding field workers: this reminded him of the way the Library's
management treated the staff. However, no one else could FIND the armed
overseer in the photograph! Although the general content and emotional
force of the exhibition was at issue, not just one employee's
overreaction to a single photograph, I was struck both by the
trivialization of slavery by comparing it with LC employment (how bad
could it be?), as well as the risk that imaginary, non-existent elements
in a photograph could be used as rationale to close an exhibition! I
predict that this incident will surface repeatedly in future discussions
of controversial exhibitions. --David Haberstich