Action: Smithsonian Censorship & What You Can Do About It
To join the march in Washington, D.C. check out TransformerGallery.com
March starts at 5:30pm Thursday, December 2
at Transformer and ends at the National Portrait Gallery
This letter was sent to TNG by a concerned citizen and avid TNG reader.
Dear friends,
As many of you have probably heard, the Smithsonian’s exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture is being censored due to pressure from the right.
The show casts the history of American art through a queer lens, challenging our assumptions about what and how art means.
The show is not a reductive look at “gay” art but rather a look at how artists navigate around a complex set of codes that govern sexual expression, how they circumvent and/or use these codes to express their own silenced desires, how they’ve dealt with love and loss when AIDS ravaged the community, and how (more recently) artists complicate society’s imperative to identify as “gay/lesbian.”
A far right fringe group (fueld by Fox news and conservative congressmen) demanded that a video by David Wojnarowicz be removed, and the museum caved with an hour. The sting is particularly sharp as this happened on the eve of world AIDS day. I am outraged — almost 20 years after his death, Wojnarowicz is still being silenced!
Please help me in rallying behind the show. We need an army of support.
What can you do?
Email Smithsonian leadership and express support for the show:
- Martin Sullivan (NPG director), SullivanM@si.edu
- Richard Kurin (undersecretary for the arts and humanities), KurinR@si.edu
- Wayne Clough (secretary of the SI), CloughW@si.edu
- Join our facebook page at www.facebook.com/support.hide.seek
- Circulate this email far and wide!
WE WON’T BE SILENT!
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I absolutely agree, and I applaud the blog’s coverage and interest in this situation, I think this is something we all need to speak up about and take action, we can’t allow that the people that have been placed in power by many keep doing what they do (decide people’s rights among other things), now also censor art, and perpetuate public acts of homophobia and backwards thinking. Galleries and Museums can’t fall under the pressure of right wing conservatives and their organizations who use religion as an excuse to bully and abuse people’s right, specifically gay people’s rights, and gay artists rights.
There is also a petition going around the internet, please sign it and show your support for the show, and lets be loud about not caving in into some sort of new inquisition.
http://www.change.org/petitions/view/national_portrait_gallery_dont_cave_in_to_fox_news_and_censor_lgbt_art_exhibit
Leave your response!