I can easily remember when art of Africa was seen as too crude and
primitive to be included in nearly any museum collection other than
anthropological collections... much in the same way as Native American
art was regarded. In the last 40 years there has been a huge change in
acceptance of such works into major museums.

What is beautiful and what is ugly are subjective, culturally-centred,
and, at best, elitist. Protecting the masses from the controversial, and
the ugly says too much about the lack of sophistication of both the
masses and the institution. The unenlightened and the mis-informed (and
uniformed) who do not have critical thinking skills, will nearly always
be led to the edge of oblivion.

In the end, we have to learn from our lack of vision, our mistakes, and
shortcomings, or we endlessly repeat them.

Dave Wells
Olympia WA
___________________________
Barnabas Strickland wrote:
>
> Is there an undeniable opposition between beauty and ugliness? Is
> everything ugly necessarily not beautiful and vice versa? Or are there
> beautiful ugly things and some things that are ugly despite their
> beauty? Do art museums slant their collections toward 'beautiful' works
> as not to upset their patrons?
>
> Barnabas Strickland
> http://home.earthlink.net/~theconceptco/Barnabas.html