Yours is so familiar a problem!
I think you should seize the situation as a "teachable moment." In a
nutshell, I think you should immediately post some easily read short texts
about what the nude in art means, and why your faculty and art students
produce this kind of image. You might even suggest specific points of
comparison between works by different arts, inviting the viewers to
recognize that artworks engage issues that go far beyond our immediate
recognition of, and response to, the subject matter.
However, I would like to share my own experience. A couple of years ago, I
was teaching art history at my own local community college (and I live in an
area that is both socially and politically conservative as well occasionally
volatile in terms of race relations). During the summer (a particularly
slow time on a slow campus), a group of prints and drawings by an alumnus
were installed in the art gallery that is a separate room in an
administration building. Our alumnus had gone on to finish his
undergraduate work at the Corcoran, and these prints and drawings were
simply gorgeous.
The artist's images were influenced by, among other things, 18th century
Venetian art and the work of Daumier and Goya. His figures were often
grotesque and masked. His theme was fear, the kind of nameless anxiety that
grips all of us at some time. These drawings had come out of a difficult
time in his life when his new born daughter was extremely ill and had almost
died. But such draughtsmanship! Such expressive qualities of black and
white!
At any rate, the gallery provided a brief (and not especially well written)
sheet providing some information about the artist and the sources of his
inspiration.
Not long after the exhibition opened, I received a call from my department
chairman asking that I attend a meeting of the colleges multicultural
advisory committee. I was told that the show's focus on Ku Klux Klan
imagery offended some African-American students and this meeting had been
called to address the problem. (I had not yet seen the show, when I
received the call.)
Sorry that this is dragging on.
I previewed the show, found that one image out of 23 invoked Klan imagery
and included a figure that was identifiably African-American. It was
obvious immediately that the art was not "about" the Klan. I introduced
myself to the artist and got a quick summary from him of his artistic
development and the production of this particular picture.
The meeting was convened. The artist was pilloried by those in attendance.
He and his work received a spirited defense from one (Jewish) member of the
committee who was unable to stay for the whole meeting, a long defense from
me, and a somewhat tentative defense from a studio faculty member who had
been his teacher. The gallery director was not there as the college
president (who attended this meeting) and the department chairman had told
her to stay in Michigan and not interrupt her summer vacation.
The most frequent comment was some variation on, "if an artwork should
offend even a single person, it should come down" and this sentiment was
spoken as often by white people as by African-Americans. There was an
outcry claiming that this artist was inviting the Klan to invade the campus,
and that the presence of the pictures made every African-American student on
campus unsafe. There was the repeated claim that the gallery would never
have allowed imagery that referred to the Nazis. Fewer than half of the
people who spoke, by the way, had actually gone in to the gallery and looked
at the art.
Articles in the newspaper repeated the claim that the exhibition was about
the Klan, although, as I have mentioned, the Klan picture was but one of 23
images. I happen to know that that particular drawing evolved slowly, over
several months, and began as a more Venetian type masked figure.
It was a horrible experience. The artist, in the end, closed his own show
because he feared for the safety of the art and feared for the safety of his
parents who lived in a nearby town. There are many more details to this
story but this response is already too long.
This, finally, is my point. During the meeting, key information (key to my
way of thinking, anyway) was made public. The gallery director had wondered
from the start whether some of the images might be controversial. She had
gone to an advisor (an African-American woman who works with the
African-American students) to get her take on things. The two of them had
consulted with a member of the multicultural committee. The consensus had
been that there would be no problem.
I, as someone who had spent a number of years in art museum education, was
aghast that they had seen these scarlet banners waving and had chosen to
ignore them. As an educator I would have started by creating a large,
wall-mounted text panel that addressed such issues up front. I would have
invited comments in a book or public comment wall. I would have scheduled
at least one and maybe more gallery talks or whatever with the artist and
with critics of the art. I would, in short, have recognized that I could
make this a teachable moment or allow it to be a disaster.
Well, it WAS a disaster, and it left a lot of damage behind and a lot of
scars.
Adrienne, you do need policy. You do need planning. But you must also have
the courage of your convictions. A college is a place where intellectual
and spiritual doors are opened and new ideas (that is, ideas new to your
college community) welcomed and discussed. If the arts are an established
part of your college's offerings, then the product of those studios--like
band performances, poems, lab research, and computer programs--should be
shared with community members who might be interested. Maybe the solution is
to find a room that has a lockable door where the art can be displayed away
from corridors, and, unfortunately, away from people.
But I hope you will resist the dominance of those who would advocate a
sterile, featureless landscape less someone stub a toe on a magically shaped
root.
Ellen Cutler
LNB Associates - Writing, Editing, Proofreading, Research Services
Aberdeen MD
----- Original Message -----
From: Adrienne Barkley <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 10:21 AM
Subject: Controversial Exhibit
> Please give me suggestions on how you or others that you know of handle
> controversial exhibit material. Our museum is on the campus of a
> community college in a somewhat conservative region. Our latest exhibit
> has two paintings of nude figures and someone has expressed deep concern
> about this. Rather than an enclosed gallery our exhibit spaces are
> glass enclosed cases built into the hallways so the individual feels he
> is subjected to things he does not want to see and does not have the
> choice of avoiding. The exhibit is artwork created by faculty and staff
> from our college.
>
> Do you have policies or guidelines on what content you won't accept into
> a non-juried exhibit? We want to be responsible to the public but also
> do not want to threaten freedom of expression.
>
> Any general guidelines or suggestions are appreciated. Thank you in
> advance.
>
> Adrienne F. Barkley
> Curator
> John A. Logan College Museum
>
> =========================================================
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