It was not my intention to make this blog into a sounding board for my political views, only for my opinions on exhibits in town. Recent events, however, have made me reconsider this idea, if only for this one post. I'm so angry I could spit nails, and since this concerns a museum exhibit, I'm going to vent my spleen here.
For those of you outside the Washington, DC area, I'm not sure if you've heard about the controversy surrounding the National Portrait Gallery's show, Hide/Seek. I have not yet seen the exhibit, so I'm basing my comments on what I've read about it, both at the museum's website and in a review and subsequent article by Blake Gropnik in the Washington Post.
The exhibit examines how homosexuality has been portrayed in portraits, focusing on times when people of the same gender were not free to express their feelings of love for one another. One portion of this exhibit is a video by an artist who died of AIDS in the early 1990s. The video was his way of demonstrating his feelings of grief and loss when his partner died of AIDS in the late 1980s. The complete video is about 30 minutes long; the National Portrait Gallery was showing a portion of the work, about 4 minutes in length. Included in this clip on display was a short (10 seconds, maybe) image of a crucifix covered in ants.
Some people have expressed offense at this image, and have declared that this is a deliberate insult to Christians and Christianity during the Christmas season. The National Portrait Gallery has removed the video and it is now on display at the Transformer Gallery.
It's difficult to know where to begin in expressing my outrage, but I'll give it the old college try. First, not everything is about the delicate sensibilities of Christians. I know that's hard for some people to understand, but it's true. My suspicion is that the artist was using the cross as a symbol for suffering, which artists have been doing for centuries. I'm sure there were other things on his mind when he created this piece than the ability of some people to take offense at everything - manufactured hysteria, I like to call it.
The idea that the curators at the National Portrait Gallery set out to deliberately offend people is preposterous. I'm sure they have much better things to do than put up displays just to make Christians unhappy. I'm sure they're well aware that they receive funding from the federal government, and that good public relations is helpful in continuing to receive that. Of course, art is not always meant to make everyone feel comfortable with their prejudices. Sometimes, it is meant to offend people and get them to examine their lives and viewpoints. It's a difficult line to walk, and I think that there are so many unobjectionable exhibits at the Portrait Gallery, that they can afford to have something a bit edgier from time to time.
Once you bring in the Christmas angle, that just smacks of the oh-so-bogus "war on Christmas" which is so ludicrous that I won't even discuss it further.
Second, this display isn't put up with public funds. Private funding paid for this display, so no taxpayer dollars were spent on this exhibit. Even if they were, I still don't buy this argument. Over the course of my working life, my tax dollars have been spent in ways I don't like, in some cases in ways that I find morally repugnant. That's how the system works. I vote for people that I think will spend my money in ways of which I approve. If those people win, then my money supports things I like. If those people don't win, then my money goes to support things I would prefer not to purchase. In either scenario, I still have to pay taxes. The idea that the government shouldn't fund anything that anyone might find objectionable is crazy. There's nothing the government funds that makes everyone happy. People who trot out this "My tax dollars are paying for this "argument are just whining like spoiled children.
Third, shame on you National Portrait Gallery. You decided to hold this exhibit and that the video should be part of it. You should stick by your decision - if you think these groups will stop with this, you are so very mistaken. They'll decide that all sort of pictures are offensive and have to go. Eventually, you'll be left with a big empty building. I find it difficult to believe that the museum didn't realize this exhibit would be controversial; when I saw the review, my first thought was that the flat earth society types would be up in arms. This is one of very few instances when I'm sorry I was right.
This exhibit is on my list to see, although I may have to go sooner than I had planned, before the whole show is closed.
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