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The National Coalition
Against Censorship has circulated the following statement in
response to the National Portrait Gallery's removal of a David
Wojnarowicz video. It is jointly signed by the National Coalition Against Censorship, American
Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, AICA-USA, Americans United for
Separation of Church and State, Association of American Publishers, Catholics for
Choice, Defending Dissent Foundation,
District of Columbia Advocates for the Arts, Advocates for the Arts
District of Columbia Arts Center, The First Amendment Project,
Provisions Library: Resources for Arts and Social Change,
Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts, Washington Project for the
Arts, and The Woodhull Freedom
Foundation
The National Portrait Gallery Betrays
Constitutional Principles by Censoring Controversial
Viewpoints:
A joint statement by the National Coalition
Against Censorship, American Booksellers Foundation for Free
Expression, AICA-USA,Americans United for Separation of Church and
State,Association of American
Publishers, Catholics for Choice, Defending Dissent
Foundation, District of Columbia Advocates for the Arts,
Advocates for the Arts District of Columbia Arts Center, The First
Amendment Project, Provisions Library: Resources for Arts and
Social Change, Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts, Washington
Project for the Arts,and The
Woodhull Freedom Foundation
The removal of David
Wojnarowicz's1987 video Fire in My
Belly from an exhibition at the
National Portrait Gallery in response to pressure from the
Catholic
League and Republican Members of Congress is a
shameful assault on First Amendment principles, which preclude
government officials from using their financial and political power
to determine what viewpoints should and should not be allowed into
a public museum.
The video was part
ofHide/Seek: Difference and
Desire in American Portraiture,
an exhibition exploring issues of sexuality and specifically gay
sexuality. After a sensationalizing review of the show published on
CNSNews.com (formerly the Conservative News Service, a news website
owned by the Media Research Center) the Catholic
League objected to the exhibition and specifically
David
Wojnarowicz' video, a work which is part death elegy about the
artist's mentor and lover Peter Hujar and part angry tirade about
the AIDS epidemic. The video uses, among many others, images of
crucifixes.
The Catholic
League called the video "hate
speech." Soon Rep. John
A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the presumptive incoming House
speaker, and incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor
(R-Va.), as well as some other Republican legislators, joined the
League in demanding the cancellation of the show, as well as
threatening future funding to the Smithsonian. Yielding to
political pressure, the Gallery's director, Martin Sullivan,
removed Wojnarowicz's video from the exhibition on November
30th.
Anybody is entitled to
criticize an art show but First Amendment principles bar government
officials from suppressing controversial viewpoints andimposing the values held by
one religious group on society at large. The National Portrait
Gallery cannot and should not tailor its programming to promote the
views of certain interest groups at the expense of others. Taxpayer
funds go to maintain a vibrant and diverse cultural sphere that
serves all Americans not just Republicans or Democrats,
conservatives or liberals, Christians or Jews. We may differ on
cultural or social issues and argue about these issues - in the
press, in public spaces, in galleries and performance spaces, but
government officials cannot use financial leverage as a threat to
silence those with whom they disagree. In 1998, while upholding the
so-called NEA decency clause, the US Supreme Court warned that
serious First Amendment problems would
be raised were the government "to leverage its power" to fund art
"into a penalty on disfavored viewpoints."
The Catholic League may insist that religious
symbols are its property and others (especially homosexuals) cannot
use them, however, a national museum is barred by First Amendment
principles, as well as by its mission to serve all Americans, from
enforcing those views on the rest of us. As the U.S. Supreme Court
stated in 1952, "the state has no
legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views
distasteful to them...It is not the business of government in our
nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular
religious doctrine."
The National Portrait Gallery's failure to stand up
for its own curatorial selection and for the free speech rights of
artists and museum visitors is likely to have a chilling effect on
future programming. Once the institution has caved in to political pressure from religious groups
and suppressed work deemed "sacrilegious" by those groups, it's
inevitable, as the Supreme Court warned in 1952, that it will yield
to "the most vocal and powerful orthodoxies" and "find it virtually
impossible to avoid favoring one religion over
another."
The Smithsonian, of which the National Portrait
Gallery is part, is a public trust serving the
interests of all Americans. It betrays its mission the moment it
ejects a work whose viewpoint some dislike.
About the National Coalition Against Censorship
The National Coalition
Against Censorship (NCAC), founded in 1974, is an alliance of 50
national non-profit organizations, including literary, artistic,
religious, educational, professional, labor, and civil liberties
groups. United by a conviction that freedom of thought, inquiry,
and expression must be defended, we work to educate our own members
and the public at large about the dangers of censorship and how to
oppose them.
National Coalition Against Censorship
725 7th Ave, New York, NY 10001
www.ncac.org
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