Unsurprisingly, no response was ever received from Giaquinto...
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From: George Slone
Sent: Monday, February 17, 2020 8:55 AM
To: exhibit@ccmoa.org <exhibit@ccmoa.org>; cmfadirector@ccmoa.org <cmfadirector@ccmoa.org>; education@ccmoa.org <education@ccmoa.org>; hrussian@comcast.net <hrussian@comcast.net>
Cc: Christopher Busa <cbusa@comcast.net>
Subject: Giaquinto satirized in a new P. Maudit cartoon
To Michael A. Giaquinto, Exhibitions Curator, Cape Cod Museum of Art:
Surprise! No response at all from you regarding my December 14th art-exhibit proposal (see below). In any case, attached is a cartoon I sketched on you yesterday. It incarnates your Achilles heel. Examine it, that is, if you seek to improve, as opposed to remaining in your Chamber-of-Commerce safe space of "acceptable" art. Likely, I will eventually include the cartoon and exhibit proposal in a flyer, which I shall distribute in front of your museum as a cogent example of CAPE COD CENSORSHIP. The curators of art on Cape Cod are truly shameful in their utter inability to deal with rare criticism that comes their way. They are censors and against the very FREEDOM OF ART!
Sincerely,
An Art Exhibit Proposal: FREEDOM OF ART vs. THE HANDS THAT FEED
To criticize the hands that feed, or potentially can feed, constitutes the prime taboo of artists (and poets and writers) today, one that most of them cannot even contemplate as a possibility. Might that incapacity implicate clear cooptation and castration? Probably.
As an artist, I’d like to see the art/academic/literary establishment open its hermetically-sealed doors to art (and poetry and writing) that dares to criticize it, including its multitude of organizations, cultural apparatchiks, and icons.
In vain, I have tried prying open those doors one the past several decades, but have almost always encountered the same reaction, one of silence, ad hominem, and/or outright absurdity, as in, for example:
—“go away troll” (dyke poet Eileen Myles)
—“Your idea of criticism, from the shrillness of your rants, excludes any sense of illumination. Please do not contact me again.” (Chris Busa, Ed., Provincetown Arts)
—“Please feel free to criticise Quillette and myself in any forum you see fit. However please refrain from submitting to us in the future.” (Claire Lehmann, Ed., Quillette, “a platform for free thought”
Art publishers, art editors, art museum curators, and artists truly do tend to possess extremely thin skin. I have knocked on the doors of both local and national establishments, including Cape Cod Art, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Cape Cod Art Center, Provincetown Arts, Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown, Mid-Cape Cultural Council, Cultural Center of Cape Cod, the NEA, ALA, PEN New England, and on and on. Sturgis library was the only door that opened and allowed me in September 2011 to exhibit some of my establishment-critical “work.” Sadly, nine months later, its director, Lucy Loomis, permanently banned me without warning or due process, five days after I’d posted an open letter critical of its hypocrisy, in particular, with regards to its collection development statement: “libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view.” Loomis rejected a free subscription offer to the nonprofit magazine I publish. In fact, not one library on Cape Cod will subscribe to it, whereas Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, NYPublic Library, Newton Free Public Library, and a handful of others subscribe.
Today, my civil rights are being denied because I cannot attend any cultural or political events held at my neighborhood library. Nobody on Cape gives a damn about that, not even the Barnstable County Human Rights Commission.
In any event, I would like to exhibit critical cartoons and critical aquarelles, especially regarding the local art and literary establishment, including the two cartoons I sketched on the Cape Cod Museum of Art.
The people who run an art gallery or a library have the right to decide on its exhibits, don’t they?
ReplyDeleteJust because there are such things as corporate co-option and hierarchical oppression doesn’t mean that those are necessarily the reasons art is rejected.
Personal aesthetic taste is actually a good enough criterion and does not need to be justified to anyone else.
Btw, the idea of ‘pulling back the veil’ on the destructive machinery of society is not new and there has perhaps never been much of a veil in the first place. The ‘Moloch’ element of the film Metropolis from 100 years ago or of Allen Ginsberg’s poem ‘Howl’ showed it. Art is style as well as subject, because the subjects themselves are not really ever unique (except perhaps due to technical advances)....
This reply, though on a different post, was meant to relate to the ‘free speech’ topic as well.
DeleteWhen public funds are accorded to galleries and libraries, the latter should be required to open their doors to dissident art, especially when that art is critical of them. Period. Highly subjective terms, including aesthetic taste, are poor criteria.
ReplyDelete