Wow, this is a great discussion!  Like Indigo, I'm sure I could argue for
either side, but seeing as its late on Friday, my brain can only handle two
thoughts on this:

One: standing in line at the grocery about a week after the event, and
seeing the cover of People or some other rag.  The picture: plane flying
into Tower Two, and the day is hazy, looking like a sunrise or sunset.  Me
getting really irritated thinking "idiots, manipulators!  everyone knows it
was a gorgeous day, blue skies... why did you pick THAT image (whether just
a bad picture or altered color), what's the point?!"

Two: the children and grandchildren of these men, standing in front of the
monument asking: "gee, that's you Grandpa?  But why does your skin look so
dark?" (yep, I work in a children's museum).

Robyne

--
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not
to think at all." - Hypatia
--
Robyne Miles
Director of Operations & Volunteers
The Science Factory
www.sciencefactory.org
phone: 541-682-7882  fax: 541-484-9027
reply to: [log in to unmask]



> From: Annette Adele Wilson <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Museum discussion list <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 10:34:58 -0500
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: flag- raising
>
> Thank you, Oliver!  The facile over-use of "PC" as a dismissive term has
> always bothered me.  Your summary of why/how it is problematic is right on
> the money. While it did not originate with Limbaugh, the accusatory cry of
> "PC"  certainly has been used as an effective way to silence voices who
> speak for inclusion and mindfulness of the effects of exclusion and
> injustice.
>
> While I missed the very beginning of this thread, it does seem to me
> absurd to slavishly copy a photograph in creating a public sculpture.
> This is especially true if the sculpture is intended not as simply a
> portrait of the three individuals in the photo, but will stand for a much
> larger, and more diverse, group of people.
>
> And thank you, Gayle-Indigo for reminding us of the constructedness of
> race and racial categories. How do we "know" that the people in the photo
> are "white" or "caucasian"?  For that matter how do we "know" they were
> all born biological males?  As long as assumptions based on appearances
> continue to be both automatic and troublingly salient in our culture, we
> should question just how our symbolic -and public- representations
> reinforce them.
>
> This is not simply a question of artistic license, of how the artist uses
> many sources -perhaps many photos- to fill one sculpture with historic
> meaning and symbolic life.  It is a larger question of how, once made and
> installed and quasi-permanent setting, a sculptural portrayal can shape
> the imagination and create (or not) possibilities for the future.
>
> As long as the category "firefighter" continues to be filled, in
> day-to-day life as well as in the fixed and enduring moment of bronze, by
> people whose "whiteness" and "maleness" is a key identifying feature, the
> harder it will continue to be for children whose non-whiteness and
> non-maleness is apparent to imagine themselves one day filling that role.
> And the harder it will be for "white males" to imagine themselves working
> side-by-side simply with people: persons of any gender and of any
> "color."
>
>
>
> Annette A. Wilson
> _________________________                            _____________________
> The University of Michigan
> College of Architecture and Urban Planning  :           Research Assistant
> -Joint Programs-                           :    Interdisciplinary Program
> 3+ Master of Architecture    and            :         in Feminist Practice
> Doctoral Program in Architecture            :              2125  Lane Hall
> Environment and Behavior            :                 734/763-3589
> __________________________________________________________________________
>
> On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, Oliver V Hirsch wrote:
>
>> This is an amazing, and often appalling, string.
>>
>> First -- who cares about replicating this image with precision?  Did you
>> want a bronze version of a photograph?  Or do you think that perhaps what
>> we have here is a s-y-m-b-o-l; a symbolic rendering of the heroic actions
>> of those who lived and those who died, but all of whom we New Yorkers
>> count as heroes.  New York is a wonderfully diverse community, and, to
>> its credit, its Fire Department has over the past decades come to reflect
>> that diversity.  Is this monument to be a bronze memento of a great
>> photographic moment? Who needs it?!  The point is to memorialize the New
>> York Fire Department, and the spirit of brave selflessness that its
>> members have demonstrated.
>>
>> Second, to use a glib sobriquet like "pc" to dismiss the impulse toward
>> making this symbol universal, and then think that you have said something
>> profound is absurd.  This is a limbaughism used to set the stage to
>> snatch back the hard-won advances of the just struggles of women and
>> people of color over the past couple of decades -- the centuries old
>> struggles of people historically at the bottom and the back.  Your
>> intended dismissal is intellectually lazy, irresponsible, and that's the
>> kind interpretation.
>>
>> We don't need another statue of white men representing all of humanity --
>> or all of the New York Fire Department for that matter.  If this
>> particular image meets more of this kind of backward opposition, no
>> problem: we have many, many images of heroes in action, and we should
>> pick a representative one.
>>
>> Oliver Hirsch
>> Hirsch & Associates Fine Art Services, Inc.
>> New York
>
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