Obscene.

[jouis_sens]

"We don’t think it’s in the interest, not only of the Smithsonian but of other federally supported cultural organizations, to pick fights."

Someone asked me this morning why I haven't remarked this week on Martin Sullivan's act of profound cowardice and incomprehensible dereliction of duty.  I haven't remarked on it, not here, not there, because--

Comments

[wicked_sassy]

More, more, more.

By the way, I have a tiny bit of good news to share with you soon. <3

& also

[wicked_sassy]

Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward, curators of the exhibition Hide/Seek, will be visiting the New York Public Library for a discussion of the exhibition, the power of sexual difference in American art and the role of LGBT collections in the museum.

Plus, New York's New Museum is showing "A Fire in My Belly."

I will stop deluging yr inbox now, Good Prof. A, and resume being a good worker bee.

Re: & also

[jouis_sens]

Never stop deluging my inbox, queen bee; yours is always such a welcome drenching.

These sparks the art world is igniting in response are heartening (however quickly they will simply disappear back into the mists), but as ever, I crave to see them flare into conflagration. A colleague sent me Katz's statement this morning, and while we despaired the naivete of his belief that there is a "decent majority of Americans" who are somehow distinguishable from a "far-Right fringe," he is of course a valued voice of sanity, and I found it interesting that our separate remarks repeated a linguistic motif. Quoting Whitman - Whoever degrades another degrades me/And whatever is done or said returns at last to me - Katz invokes not merely the same ontopolitical concept, which could be figured in a variety of ways, but the very word, that grounded my own response: degradation. This points to something, suggests that there is something instinctually legible in censorship that we respond to viscerally; to the way in which censorship of art is,

Why do you build me up/ buttercup

[jouis_sens]

If the glad tidings are anything less than that you're moving to new york tomorrow, my crest it shall be fallen. No, I'm glad there's good news, whatever it be. I'm not even going near email until tomorrow or Saturday, so I congratulate you in the abstract until that concrete corresponding.

This is putrid. You may not want to read it.

[dulcemia]

"Smithsonian stands firmly behind Hide/Seek Exhibit
http://www.npg.si.edu/docs/SIstand.pdf

This was an amusing subject line in my inbox.

[jouis_sens]

Then I followed the link, and the amusement ceased. It's knifelike, the press release's reduplication of the erasure that was the original act of removing David Wojnarowicz's video -- by which I mean the statement's conspicuous omission of his name and/or the name of the piece.

"The public": no. It generated 'strong response' from the Catholic League. Reification. They'll say it enough times, conflate those two entities often enough, until- it becomes fatally true. In a sense, I suppose it already is. I'm going to have to dig deep to not do something impulsive and disastrous when I attend next month...

[dulcemia]

I feel like it's so much worse somehow because David is deceased.

[dulcemia]

The erasure, I mean.

[avidrucker]

Hey, long time no see! Its been almost 6 years now, I don't know if you remember me... we were in Figure Drawing with Mr. DeMauro. Do you still check your old email address once in a while? If you do, you'll find a message from me. Hope all's well!
Avi
avidrucker at gmail dot com