Hi Loretta,
I understand where you're coming from. But no-one MUST look at public
sculpture. Similarly, no one MUST read billboards, watch television, or
listen to public address announcements. People in our hurried society
tune out their surroundings all the time. Maybe that's the problem!?
Perhaps people need to connect and express with their emotions - even if
they rage against a work of art - rather than trying to repress it all.
Not looking at the sculpture doesn't make the reality go away?
Some memorials are serene in their abstraction - such as the Vietnam War
Memorial. Touching. Contemplative. Intense in its very austerity.
But should every memorial fit some abstract, distant model? NO! There
is no reason to shy away from the outrage and sadness we feel because of
the events of September 11, 2001 . . . even if it's a sculpture that
evokes and provokes.
To address your question (below) about Holocaust memorials: The most
touching memorial I've seen is a sculpture by George Segal (at the
Jewish Museum in New York) which depicts - in Segal's typical white
plaster casts - a ghostly man standing at a barbed wire fence with a
pile of ghostly DEAD behind him. It is haunting. It is sad. It is the
reason I mourn having a small family . . . and it reminds me why I am so
lucky to be alive, to carry on traditions that someone, long before I
was born, tried to snuff out.
(I think this link should work, though it's very long:
http://www.jewishmuseum.org/Pages/Exhibitions/Permanent_Exhibition/PermL
4Zoom/RealizeZoom/realizeR24.html)
And, naturally, I hope people are aware of the giant bowl of ash and
bone fragments of 100,000 victims at Majdanek concentration camp . . .
http://www.bonder.com/tour/part5.html
(fourth and fifth pictures from the top)
Never again!
To each his own . . .
Jay Heuman
Visitor & Volunteer Services Coordinator
Joslyn Art Museum
2200 Dodge Street, Omaha, NE, 68102
342-3300 (telephone) 342-2376 (fax)
"You can’t lock up art in a vault and keep it frozen for posterity. Then
the artist is betrayed, history is betrayed."
(Walter Persegati)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of lorettalorance
> Sent: Friday, September 20, 2002 10:45 am
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: 9/11 Censorship? Statue of falling woman censored
>
>
> Freedom of expression does not equal freedom of display.
>
> And, what is an appropriate memorial? Should the memorial of
> the bombing of the Murrah building include sculptures of children
> whose bodies have been blown to bits? Should war memorials
> include statues of soldiers whose bodies are clearly riddled with
> bullets? Should a memorial to Tiannamen Square include figures
> whose heads have burst from the pressure of being run over by
> a tank? Should memorials to the Holocaust show people holding
> bars of stone and trying to claw their ways to fresh air?
>
> I guess everyone must answer these questions for themselves.
> Obviously, I would answer each of those questions in the
> negative.
>
> Loretta Lorance
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