Robert M. Nash

Open Letter to Robert M. Nash,

Executive Director of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod

(From Issue #28, The American Dissident)

 

As a fervent free-speech proponent, who actively tests the waters of democracy here on Cape Cod, I find your statement commendable:
 

The Cultural Center of Cape Cod is a community-based organization that strives to live up to its motto “All the Arts for All of Us” by offering a wide range of events, exhibits, and educational programs.  Everything that happens at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod—everything it does and represents—is predicated upon a democratic philosophy of inclusion, encouragement, and accessibility. Everyone who comes to the Center with an idea, question, or request is given the time, attention, and energy it takes to consider all possibilities and address needs creatively and compassionately.  At the same time, the Center strives to maintain a level of quality in its offerings that puts it among the area’s best galleries and performing arts centers. Its goal is to encourage both excellence and inclusion.
 

Sadly, however, the waters of democracy on the Cape seem to be quite murky.   Might the Cultural Center waters be equally murky?  Does “all the arts” include my art too?  Likely it does NOT.  “Inclusion” pronouncements tend to be fraudulently issued by cultural apparatchiks, poets and artistes of the machine, political hacks, and Cape Cod library directors… you know, as in “libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view,” but somehow manage to permanently exclude points of view like mine.   Director Lucy Loomis, for example, permanently excluded my viewpoints from Sturgis Library without warning or due process, proving the point. 

These things said, how about a show to counter your “Heavenly Bodies:  The Human Form, Transformed” exhibit called “Shaky Community Pillars:  Business-as-Usual” in which artists would submit work critical of local art apparatchiks, librarians, chamber-of-commerce bureaucrats, academics, etc.?   Why is art so dull, predictable, and safe on Cape Cod?  Why is it so smiley-face and lacking in societal criticism?  Why is it rarely, if ever, art against the established order?  Evidently, the latter has been quite successful in coopting it.  “Quality” and “excellence,” two highly subjective terms, are evidently used to dismiss art of a critical nature. 

Can I meet with you to propose an art and literary exhibit that would test the veracity of your “inclusion” statement above?  Your poet curator, Joe Gouveia, has already proven it to be essentially untrue, so I thought I should check with you before drawing my final conclusions.  Thank you for your attention and hopeful response.  I’d be glad to come down to the Center to meet with you.  If I do not hear from you, I will come down to knock on your door.  Thank you for your hopeful attention. 

[No response.  Nothing like excluded inclusion!]

 

Open Letter #2 to Robert M. Nash

So, your non-response leads me to believe that you are commonly thin-skinned regarding valid criticism and also shamefully hypocritical regarding your very own statement, in particular, “All the Arts for All of Us” and “democratic philosophy of inclusion.”  Clearly, you have decided that I am ONE ARTIST NOT FOR YOU and YOUR CENTER, which clearly points to the hypocrisy of your purported “inclusion.”  Why feel compelled to jabber about INCLUSION when you must certainly know in your hearts that by nature you wish to be EXCLUSIONARY?  As a perhaps rare intellectually honest person, I do have great difficulty understanding the COMMON CULTURAL APPARATCHIK.  How about helping me in that endeavor?  When will you be available to meet with me at YOUR Cultural Center… in the name of INCLUSION?  Please do respond!  I am a taxpaying citizen of Barnstable… and you are receiving tax funding. 

[No response.  No accountability. Culture as Usual...]