Philip Kennicott, a Washington Post staff writer, has published a tough commentary demanding the resignation of Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough, who made the decision to remove the David Wojnarowicz video from Hide/Seek after a right-wing protest. Kennicott says the decision "showed an astonishing lack of perception about the humanities as well as the dynamics of museum culture. It was tactically, strategically and historically stupid." Summarizing the aftermath, he writes:
"The removal of the video was a tiny gesture of exclusion meant to thwart the powerful march of democratic openness that museums in general, and this exhibition in particular, exemplify.
"Thus: Gays are allowed to be seen in the museum, but not entirely; scholars control the agenda, unless bureaucrats countermand them; new forms of the sacred can be represented, unless old defenders of the sacred take offense."
Last week, another artist in Hide/Seek, AA Bronson of Canada, asked the Portrait Gallery to remove his large-scale photograph "Felix, June 5, 1994" in protest of the museum's caving to censorship. The museum has refused, claiming the legal right to keep the work in the exhibit. Kennicott argues they must let Bronson remove his photograph:
"Although it would harm the integrity of the show, allowing Bronson to remove his work would create a large symbolic hole in the exhibition, a blank space on the wall, which could be explained as a marker of the Smithsonian's mistake and the aggression of outside forces that resist the powerful, democratic agenda of the modern museum at its best.
"That agenda, the result of decades of efforts at reforming an institution that once bluntly manifested state and class power (through architecture, art and hierarchical social codes), is the backdrop against which Clough made his ill-fated decision. The modern museum has evolved from a straightforward display of power - this is Culture, so genuflect, ye masses - to a paradoxical place where old forms of power and discipline are harnessed to create new kinds of debate and criticism."
Hide/Seek runs through February 13. See it. If you can't, buy the catalog, still only $29.70.
Me encanta. And I love that I can always depend on Band of Thebes to keep me current. Thank you. Once again.
Posted by: Sandy | December 29, 2010 at 05:41 AM