Museum as Provocateur—Art Galleries and Controversy

NOTES

• This is an expanded version of a paper delivered at “Ethics and Aesthetics,” a conference organised by the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (NSW Chapter) 19–20 September 2003, itself a development of an earlier version at the AAANZ annual conference in December 2002. My thanks to all whom I interviewed in 2002 and to Bernice Murphy and my colleagues at Victoria University of Wellington for their editorial acuity.
   Google Scholar
• While the discussion here is confined to international touring exhibitions, further research I am undertaking will consider the implications of controversy generated by exhibitions and individual works made by local artists.
   Google Scholar
• Interview, Lois Wishart-Lindsay, Department of Communications and the Arts, Canberra, 16 August 2002. See also Carol Henry with reference to Art Exhibitions Australia (AEA) policy, cited in Joyce Morgan, “The Serrano Aftermath,” Sydney Morning Herald (17 February 1998). The exhibition A History of Andres Serrano opened at the NGV Melbourne on Friday 10 October, and was closed two days later on Sunday 12 October 1997.
   Google Scholar
• Rehanna Ali, cited in Megan Lane, “Statue Debate Ends in Stalemate,” Evening Post (Wellington, 14 April 1998). Note also that Mary is mentioned positively in the Qur'an.
   Google Scholar
• Conversation with Puspa Wood, 16 October 2002.
   Google Scholar
• Interview, Bernice Murphy, 3 December 2002. Murphy, then co-director and chief curator at the MCA (and curator of Pictura Britannica) is convinced that the public gained a sense of increased power to affect arts institutions after their protests successfully impacted on the Serrano exhibition at the NGV and their attention then turned to the MCA. A replacement of the Kovats sculpture (a multiple) was obtained by the MCA from the artist in London, restored to the exhibition, and displayed for the remainder of its showing without further incident.
   Google Scholar
• Protests began from when the show was previewed by Paul Holmes a week before its opening; both TV1 and TV3 featured the exhibition on the news approximately six times (Te Papa's exhibition report to British Council, nd). More than 30,000 people signed a petition for the removal of Virgin in a Condom;, hundreds of letters appeared in local, regional and national newspapers and journals; and more than 14% of the viewing public watched a 13 April 1998 debate on TV3 (Lane, “Statue Debate Ends”).
   Google Scholar
• The seizure was made under the NSW Indecent Articles and Publications Act. The premier of NSW, Neville Wran, intervened declaring that the police ought not to be involved in censorship of the arts, and the work was reinstated in a specially contained space within the Power Gallery of Contemporary Art, at the University of Sydney, then under the curatorship of Elwyn Lynn. There it was installed behind a curtain with a sign restricting viewers to those 18 years and over.
   Google Scholar
• Interview Janda Gooding, 6 August 2002.
   Google Scholar
• The Gallery's strict enforcement of its self-imposed age restriction, even in the case of the nine-day old Willie, featured also in The Australian (20 December 1995): 15. After the office of Film and Literature Classification classified the accompanying book publication R18, the Gallery imposed the same restriction on visitors to the exhibition—even though not all the works in the book were in the exhibition. New Zealand's Classification Office also required that the book be sold in a wrapper. It should be noted in this context that New Zealand law differs from Australian in respect of art shown in galleries. In New Zealand exhibitions containing material that may be classified as “objectionable” (section 3 of the Films, Videos and Publications Act, 1993) must be submitted to the Office of Film and Literature Classification in the same way as books, videos and films”—visual art is subject to the same limitations on freedom of expression as other creative endeavours.
   Google Scholar
• Interview, Martin Caiger-Smith, 23 July 2002. Approximately 40 works were deleted from the latter venue for space reasons, but Hayward staff acknowledge Rosie was among these in part because of recent publicity in the UK about a paedophile ring in Belgium. The Hayward Gallery imposed an R18 age restriction, but younger people accompanied by their parents were able to view the show.
   Google Scholar
• The most recent example in New Zealand relates to reported responses to Mika: Kai Tahu, 1994, an image of a Maori entertainer dressed only in boots and a brassiere with false breasts, from Christine Webster's “Black Carnival” series at the new Christchurch Art Gallery. See Kim Knight, “Exposed: Why this Photo has Sparked a Furore,” Sunday Star-Times (17 August 2003).
   Google Scholar
• This issue was canvassed by Professor Terence Smith in his 1 May 2001 lecture, “What is Contemporary Art? Contemporary art, Contemporaneity and Art to Come,” published in Artspace Visual Arts Centre's Critical Issues Series 6 (Sydney, 2001). I am grateful to him for discussing my topic during my visit to the Getty Research Centre, LA, in June 2002.
   Google Scholar
• The Corcoran Museum's withdrawal from showing a programmed exhibition of Mapplethorpe's photographs at the eleventh hour in 1989 is a parallel example, although this was an overt case of the Gallery's director, Christina Orr-Cahill, bending to political pressure. See Steven C. Dubin, Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions (London: Routledge, 1992) 176–9.
   Google Scholar
• Sensation was formally accepted on 25 May 1999 (letter Brian Kennedy to Roberta Entwistle), becoming part of the Gallery's published programme for 2000 in the ensuing months. A decision was taken by the NGA Board of Trustees to withdraw from showing it in late November 1999 by which time controversy at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York—in popular terms centring around Chris Ofili's image of the Virgin Mary, and in professional terms sources of financial support for the exhibition—was at its height. However, it should be noted that the withdrawal from showing Sensation was one of only a few instances when an institutional decision such as this has been framed by its director in ethical terms (refer Brian Kennedy's statements, including “A Case of Museum Ethics” circulated to NGA staff and his subsequent “How Much Do We Care About Museum Ethics?” Art on View 23 (Spring 2000) 3–5. Perhaps to his detriment, however, the NGA press release of 29 November 1999 did not refer to the ethical debates that had accompanied the exhibition in New York, out of deference to Charles Saatchi (interview Brian Kennedy, 14 August 2002). Kennedy discovered how hard it becomes to change perceptions in the midst of any media frenzy and, in general, both the general public and the art community remained unconvinced by this basis for his and ultimately the Board's decision.
   Google Scholar
• Philip Yenawine, “Introduction: But What Has Changed?” Art Matters: How the Culture Wars Changed America, ed. Brian Wallis, Marianne Weems and Philip Yenawine (New York: NY UP, 1999) 9.
   Google Scholar
• While the combination is a potent cocktail, religion seems to be the more controversial of these two in this part of the world, ostensibly and officially secularised. There were many more vigorous public protests about Serrano's Piss Christ in Melbourne and Tania Kovats’ Virgin in a Condom (as well as Sam Taylor-Wood's Wrecked) in Wellington than in relation to any other art events.
   Google Scholar
• Commenting shortly after the closure of Serrano, Bernice Murphy, cited in Joyce Morgan, “Puritans Lower the Shutters,” Sydney Morning Herald (18 October 1997) 43.
   Google Scholar
• Artist Andres Serrano remains angry at the closure of his show taking the view that, once a gallery agrees to exhibit the work of an artist, they have no choice but to stand by their decision (interview, 15 June 2002). Photography curator, Isobel Crombie, was also upset by the decision to close the exhibition (interview, 8 August 2002) but, as I show later, commercial imperatives took precedence over others in this case.
   Google Scholar
• This sentiment has been surprisingly pervasive and long lasting. See, for example, a letter to the editor of Wellington's Dominion Post of 30 December 2002 (p B4) under the heading, “Treated differently,” in which the writer says: “Te Papa outraged many by displaying a Virgin in a Condom, yet it would never dare offend Maoridom by exhibiting a tiki in a prophylactic.”
   Google Scholar
• Interview, Norman Rosenthal, London, 24 July 2002. Age of Modernism was to have been shown together with the Hayward Gallery and the Whitechapel Art Gallery.
   Google Scholar
• Apparently, a bestselling item at the gala opening was an enamel pin that read “Danger—Art.” See also, David Barstow, “Public at Last Sees the Art Behind the Fuss,” New York Times (3 October 1999) 1 and 48 ff. Barstow's articles from the NYT and others from the US were widely syndicated in the Australian press prior to the NGA's withdrawal from staging Sensation, leading to a degree of prevailing negative comment that the NGA Board of Trustees agreed made it an unhealthy climate in which to display the exhibition.
   Google Scholar
• Refer “The New Gatekeepers” conference, 20–21 November 2002, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism http://www.najp.org/conferences/gatekeepers/panels.htm. My thanks to Dr Michael Volkerling for making me aware of this website.
   Google Scholar
• As Scott Rothkopf suggests in his review of the Venice Biennale, “In the bag,” Artforum 17.1 (September 2003): 177. Thanks to Elizabeth Ann Macgregor for drawing my attention to this review.
   Google Scholar
• My thanks to Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Geri Thomas, with whom I discussed this exhibition and others covered in this paper in New York in June 2002.
   Google Scholar
• Conversation, Ted Gott, Melbourne, 8 August 2002. Institutional and exhibition policies of government-funded organisations reflect to a greater or lesser extent government priorities, even if “arm's length” policy is said to prevail, and Ted Gott is clearly of the view that it is unlikely that Don't Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS would be staged in Canberra in the different climate of the current Howard government.
   Google Scholar
• Both Serrano's “anti-Christian” imagery and the US “Culture wars” against censorship were referenced in a 27 August 1997 press release.
   Google Scholar
• A History of Sex was funded by the Gröninger Museum and made in the Netherlands, becoming part of their initial retrospective project. Gallery curator Isabel Crombie selected from this group for the NGV, but the complete sex series was shown in Melbourne at the no- longer active dealer gallery, Kirkcaldy Davies, at the time of the opening of A History of Andres Serrano, with costs for the artist's visit being shared.
   Google Scholar
• The Supreme Court of Victoria judgement was delivered on 9 October 1997, the day before the official opening. Director Timothy Potts immediately released a press statement, poignant in retrospect, stating: “The National Gallery of Victoria is very pleased with the outcome of the hearing which upholds the freedom of artistic expression.”
   Google Scholar
• Interview, Robert Edwards and Carol Henry, Art Exhibitions Australia, Sydney, 20 August 2002.
   Google Scholar
• A teenager smashed the glazed surface of Piss Christ on the first day of the exhibition. Although Serrano proposed leaving the work in place until it was replaced (interview, Andres Serrano, 15 June 2002), Dr Timothy Potts cited his inability to “guarantee the security of visitors, staff of the Gallery, or of the photographs” as the reason for the exhibition's closure (memorandum to NGV staff, 13 October 1997). See also, Timothy Potts, “Anguish in the Fight for Freedom,” The Age (18 October 1997).
   Google Scholar
• Director Paula Savage wrote to Brett Rogers at the British Council, withdrawing from Pictura Britannica on 3 October 1997. She had talked informally with Te Papa about taking the exhibition, which was offered to Te Papa on 11 November 1997, a mere three months prior to its opening.
   Google Scholar
• “The Bi-cultural Buffer Zone: Art in Te Papa,” a paper that I delivered at the Art Association of Australia annual conference in Canberra, 1997, was an example of pre-opening questioning of Te Papa's approach to the display of art. See also Anna Miles, “The Art in MoNZ,” Monica 8 (October/November 1996): 8–9; Robert Leonard, “Papa's Bag,” Artforum, 36.5 (January 1998): 42.
   Google Scholar
• “Our place” appears in red lettering under the blue thumbprint of the Saatchi-designed logo of Te Papa. Predictably, the term has become the butt of jokes by Museum detractors—as well as the subject of art, for example, Peter Robinson's Our Place, 1997, Melbourne: private collection, in which the words “Our Place” are featured with a swastika alluding to the “feel good fascism” of Te Papa (among other cultural institutions in Aotearoa New Zealand).
   Google Scholar
• Sotheran also took part in a widely viewed debate on TV3 on 13 April 1998 towards the end of the show. Chaired by John Campbell, the panel included theologian-filmmaker, Stuart McKenzie, lawyer Rehanna Ali and the Catholic Bishop of Palmerston North, Peter Cullinane.
   Google Scholar
• With apologies to George Dickie's arguments developed in detail and with a good deal more sophistication in more than one published form, but importantly in The Art Circle (New York: Haven Publications, 1984). For a discussion of his view see also Nigel Warburton, The Art Question (London: Routledge, 2003) 87–118.
   Google Scholar
• See my paper, “Questions of Access,” Extending Parameters (Sydney: Australia Council, 1990) 41–6.
   Google Scholar
• In addition to the recent examples I have traversed in this paper, a number of past instances of art controversy in Australia and New Zealand give us further historical material to consider. Some of these instances have been the subject of exhibitions in both countries. Refer Alison Carroll, Art and Moral Censorship in Australia at ACCA, Melbourne, in 1989 and Jim Barr and Mary Barr, When Art Hits the Headlines, staged at New Zealand's former National Art Gallery's contemporary space, Shed 11, Wellington, in 1987.
   Google Scholar