I know so little about art I don't even know what I like. Thankfully, I have my lovely GF and her friends to hip me to interesting stuff. Big h'tip to Robin Sandler of Sandler Hudson for calling attention to this story of censorship FAIL.
Kennesaw State University is rightly proud of their new museum, the Zuckerman Museum of Art, to feature pieces from their permanent collection and new loans of contemporary pieces. The museum brought together an impressive inaugural show for their opener last night, highlighting works related to the university and area.
Of course, Georgia's legacies aren't all lovely. And woe to the artist who dares to draw attention to that uncomfortable fact.
In 2008, the university acquired the homestead of Corra Harris, a noted Georgia author of hundreds of articles and 20 books. Among her other notable accomplishments, was the first female war correspondent in the First World War.
It was the piece that launched her career that interested artist Ruth Stanford.
In 1899, at the age of 30, Harris was tired of northerners' picky criticism of time-honored southern tradition, and wrote an article in response to an editorial in the Independent which condemned the lynching of Thomas Wilkes in Newman. Harris' response, entitled "A Southern Woman's View," defended the practice of summarily executing accused black men as necessary to preserve the virtue of white women from the depredations of evil, dark men desperate for their comely pink flesh.
While many of Harris' later writings were less controversial, she retained her reactionary, racist point of view through her lifetime, though after her death, that aspect of her work has been downplayed by biographers.
But it was precisely that legacy that Ruth Sanford sought to highlight in her commissioned piece for the Zuckerman's opening. She crafted a piece entitled "A Walk in the Valley," consisting of, among other elements, shredded copies of Harris' books and redacted photographs of the author.
During a pre-opening walk-through of the exhibit, university president Daniel Papp, upon seeing Stanford's piece, became "irate" and ordered the work removed from the show. Whether because of its disrespect for a noted Georgia woman of letters now associated with the university or because of its reminders of that woman's views is unclear, but Papp and the university obviously didn't want these difficult details highlighted in their museum's very public debut. An official statement from the school suggested Stanford's piece might be exhibited "at a more appropriate later time."
And there you go. Ends tied, dust swept under rug, all nice and tidy.
Except this is one of those occasions when censorship provides the opportunity for much wider dissemination of an idea than simply letting it be expressed might have.
Stephanie Cash of Burnaway learned of the controversy and wrote a detailed article on the piece, Stanford and Harris' legacy. MoveOn started a petition to have the piece returned to the exhibit. At the show's opening, protesters showed up at the museum, calling attention to the piece's removal and got coverage on the local CBS affiliate. And, inevitably, the southern art world's grapevine rattled away.
News of the event and the protests, the artist and her subject, has spread even to philistines like myself, who, before this, had never heard of Ms. Harris and her stained legacy. Heck, before this, I'm not sure I could have spelled Kennesaw.
While these events will surely spark discussions on art, literature, racism and social commentary, I'm mostly struck by the example of the futility of censorship. As is so often the case, those who wish to stifle a message (or messenger) would do better to simply build them a soapbox and let them rail.
Telling them to shut up can ring louder than anything they'd intended to say in the first place.
Addendum: Thanks to jayden for providing the name of this particular form of FAIL.