Creating a Sensation in American Museums:

Art Until Now: Van Gogh’s Ear

A Look at Controversial Art

 by

Christine Abe

Wayne State University

Abstract

In 1999, the Detroit Institute of Arts’ new director, Graham W. J. Beal shut down Van Gogh’s Ear, the first installment of the twelve-week exhibition Art Until Now, curated by Michigan artist Jef Bourgeau.  Art Until Now was meant to look back on the previous century, and to a greater extent, the tumultuous past decade in art. Van Gogh’s Ear was to lead in the DIA’s blockbuster exhibit, Van Gogh: Face to Face, which opened in March 2000. Curators from the DIA approached Mr. Bourgeau two years before, during a time when the museum was without a director, proposing that he bring together works that would reference art of the 1990s. At the time, the art world had just been rocked by Sensation, an exhibition of artwork from the collection of Charles Saatchi, who, in the 1990s, began buying and showing artwork by a new generation of young British artists. The art in Sensation dealt openly with subject matter like religion and sex, among others. Not surprisingly, Sensation was met with fierce protest and criticism before it opened in New York in the fall of 1999. What this paper aims to do is to investigate why institutions may, or may not, take on the risks associated with exhibiting art that presses buttons with its audiences, and exploring the reasons behind those instances. This will be achieved by examining highly significant cases of reputable public institutions choosing to display controversial art (or, as in the case of the Corcoran Gallery, in which the art in question was passed over in the eleventh hour). Repercussions of both aspects of policy-driven decisions will also be discussed. What made the DIA’s actions unique is that, rather than pre-empting an potentially controversial exhibition, or reacting to complaints by the public, director Graham Beal chose a self-censoring and retroactive approach. He closed Van Gogh’s Ear three days after it opened to the public.

Introduction

            What is an art museum’s role in society? Better yet, what is its duty? All museums have a mission, outlining exactly what they as an institution believe that to be. This should include, to some extent, collecting and preserving artifacts and specimens; exhibiting, interpreting and educating with the intent “to expand our knowledge about ourselves, our society, and our world” (Gennoways & Ireland, 2003). Expanding such knowledge doesn’t mean excluding the unpleasant or unattractive aspects. To be specific, no museum should state in its mission that it will exclude certain material from exhibition. To do so would be the ultimate division of an already precarious establishment.

            A central theme to the issue of content is money. The condition of museums’ finances in the United States is growing steadily worse, and this situation is perpetuated by the fact that our society seems largely unwilling to “adequately fund the making and showing of art” (Rothfield, 2001). No matter how noble the curators or directors of art museums may believe themselves to be, they must satisfy their boards, their stakeholders, or risk the withdrawal of their support, financial and otherwise.

            Contemporary art – a movement of art as much about the artist, and his or her perception and interpretation of their places in society, as it is about the art – has made aspects of our history, our story as a society or as a group, difficult to experience again. Controversial images, depictions, and interpretations of 20^th century events become a topic too hot to touch, a sort of “hot-potato” for many museums. Naturally, cultural institutions like art museums learn to stay away from potential dangers to their success and longevity.

A Brief Overview of Controversial Art

Controversy in art is nothing new. For as long as there have been artists, there has been a public to challenge. In 19^th century Baltimore, citizens were outraged at the sculptures of “busty neoclassical goddesses by Hiram Powers” (Atkins, 1991). Concern was such that a delegation of clergymen was sent to judge whether they were moral enough to be seen by Christians.

The Impressionists created a stir in breaking down light and color into individual elements. Because they broke from the traditional standards of French painting, this caused them to be rejected from the prestigious Salon de Paris.  In their own right, the Impressionists were initially controversial by not conforming to the accepted style of smooth and blended brushstrokes, and further by painting what was beyond the wall of their studios. They began painting en plein air, choosing to capture moments of daily life, snapshots before the era of photography, rather than pursue formal portraits or still lives.  The public was rattled to see these artists turning away from traditional subjects and techniques, and really never looking back.

In the early twentieth century, Picasso’s tribal-looking Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, fractured as though viewed through a broken mirror, sent cracks through the dappled light-and-shadow world created by the Impressionists. Marcel Duchamp’s Nu descendant un escalier No. 2 (Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2) was rejected from the Salon des Independents in Paris in 1912, and became the subject of ridicule after showing at the Armory Show in New York. When Duchamp created Fountain, a urinal signed “R. Mutt”, the question was raised, and has been asked repeatedly since: “But is it art?”

The Perfect Moment

Museums that choose to show controversial art can face difficulties. At the extreme end of this spectrum is legal action, as in the instance of the Contemporary Art Center (CAC) in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1990, the CAC’s director, Dennis Barrie, became the first American museum director to be criminally prosecuted for the contents of an exhibition (Barrie, 2007). He and the CAC, showed The Perfect Moment, an exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, originally curated by Janet Kardon during her tenure at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (she would testify on Barrie’s behalf during the trial). Most of the images were portraits of friends and celebrities, and floral studies. However, some of them were openly homosexual.

Police entered the museum during the opening reception of The Perfect Moment, on April 7, 1990. Barrie and the CAC were charged with “pandering obscenity” and showing minors in the nude. After just a few days, though, Barrie was acquitted, the jury deciding it could see no moral issue with the 7 images (out of 175 in the exhibition) in question. Despite this, Barrie lost his job the next year, his board feeling as though the CAC, and the city of Cincinnati, could never get out from under the remains of the arrests, charges, trial, and acquittal.

At the same time, museums that choose – especially for political reasons – to pass over showing art they know to be risky, risqué, or otherwise potentially offensive to their patrons can also suffer the consequences.  Prior to The Perfect Moment going to Cincinnati, the exhibition had been shown at the University of Pennsylvania, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and at the University of California-Berkeley Art Museum without issue. Christina Orr-Cahall, the director of the Corcoran Art Gallery, the largest privately funded cultural institution in Washington D.C., cancelled the exhibition a week and a half before it was scheduled to open in July of 1989, just a few months after Mapplethorpe’s death in March.

It was made public that a group exhibition which included Andres Serrano’s photograph Piss Christ – a color-reversal print of a plastic crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine – was funded by a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) through a contemporary arts center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina – Southern conservative Senator Jesse Helms’ home state. During his 30-year career in the Senate, Helms opposed, at different times, civil rights, feminism, gay rights, affirmative action, abortion, foreign aid, and government support for modern art containing nudity. In May of 1989, Helms denounced on the Senate floor any grant of an NEA subsidy that was not censored according to a "national arts policy" against blasphemy, sex, and violence.

Corcoran director Christina Orr-Cahall concluded that The Perfect Moment was too great a political risk. Because it had originally been funded by an NEA grant of $30,000, Orr-Cahall caved in to opposing political and religious pressures (Fritscher, 2001), and subsequently lost her job. Infuriated members of the D.C. arts community reacted to Orr-Cahall’s politicized decision by organizing their own show one evening, projecting the most “offensive” of Mapplethorpe’s images on the façade of the Corcoran. Later, the Washington Project for the Arts showed The Perfect Moment in its entirety in a small brownstone in D.C., ironically just a short distance from Capitol Hill. Organizers placed the most sensitive images, called the “X Portfolio”, in a separate room on the top floor of their small building, choosing to place them out of direct view, rather than censor them altogether.

Sensation…

In pushing the boundaries of what has been the classic definition of art, artists use socially sensitive and often personal topics, such as racism, religion, politics, sex and sexuality. Sensation was an exhibition of art of the Young British Artists (YBA) from the collection of Charles Saatchi, an advertising magnate and art philanthropist. The YBAs were a group of artists including Damien Hirst, a conceptual artist known for using whole or partitioned animal specimens, preserved in formaldehyde, in large art pieces; Tracey Emin, a multi-media/installation/video artist, known for using deeply personal, often sexual experiences in her work; and Jake and Dinos Chapman, brothers whose collaborative work draws on their political views, abuses of the body, and the atrocities of war. Sensation traveled from London to Berlin to New York over a period of three years.

At the Royal Academy in London, the largest outcry was over Marcus Harvey’s painting of convicted child-killer Myra Hindley, which was composed of hundreds of copies of handprints, made from a cast of a child’s hands. The protest group Mothers Against Murder and Aggression picketed outside the Royal Academy, along with the mother of one of Myra Hindley’s victims, who was so distraught that she couldn’t enter the gallery where Myra was hung. Hindley wrote from prison, requesting that the painting be removed from the exhibit out of respect for the families of her victims (Lyell, 1997, September 20). Despite this request, Myra remained – demonstrators smashed the front windows and threw eggs and ink at the painting[1]. After restoration, it was placed behind Plexiglas and guarded for the remainder of the exhibition’s run in London.

Recently, Myra has caused another rush of controversy – an image of the painting was used in a video shown at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, in order to promote travel to, and in effect, the arts in, London for the Olympic Games to be held there in 2012.

During its stay in New York at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Sensation was met with “instant protest”[2]. Rudolph Giuliani, then-mayor of New York City, viewed the exhibition catalogue 10 days prior to the exhibition opening, and promptly hit out at one piece in particular – “Holy Virgin Mary”, a six-foot by eight-foot image of a Black Madonna by Chris Ofili (a Briton of Nigerian heritage), ornamented with elephant dung and collaged with cut-outs of female genitalia from adult and pornographic magazines. From a distance, these might be interpreted as slightly cartoonish cherubs or insects, but were ignored much of the time by the press, who instead focused on the title’s reference, and the use of elephant dung. In fact, Dubin (1999) reported that most patrons responding to a survey said they would not have been bothered by Ofili’s painting (or Serrano’s photograph) had it not been for the title.

The sensation caused by Sensation was far-reaching – nuns from a nursing order in Malawi contacted the Brooklyn Museum, confused as to why Ofili’s painting was so offensive. The sisters explained that in the tiny southeast African republic, they often made a poultice of elephant dung to sooth breast inflammations in new mothers, which reduces swelling and enables them to successfully breastfeed their children (Dubin, 1999). In the nuns’ experience, elephant dung used in this way has “revitalizing powers”, and supports the image of the Madonna as a source and preserver of life.

Giuliani railed to the press that “Holy Virgin Mary” was blasphemous and ‘sick’[3], which ignited protest from many groups before they’d ever laid eyes on the painting. Religious groups, such as the Catholic League, chanted the rosary and handed out vomit bags to patrons entering the exhibit. Giuliani’s protest was so strong that the $7 million dollar annual grant from City Hall was temporarily suspended. He stated [toward the Brooklyn Museum], “You don’t have a right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else’s religion.” Interesting, as Ofili is a practicing Roman Catholic (Dubin, 1999).

…And More

            Ten years before Sensation opened, Scott Tyler (now known as “Dread” Scott), a senior photography student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, created an installation “for audience participation” titled What is the Proper Way to Display the American Flag? Tyler’s installation, part of the exhibition of student work called A/Part of the Whole, consisted of a small black-and-white photomontage mounted on a wall; below this was a ledge holding a comment book. On the floor directly beneath the ledge was an American flag. The photomontage included images of South Korean students burning an American flag, signs with the words “Yankee go home son of a bitch”, and flag-draped coffins. In order to study the image, or to read or write in the comment book, audience members had little choice but to step on the flag. Chicago officials maintained that the work constituted desecration of the flag, in violation of a local ordinance.

George H. W. Bush attacked Tyler, calling his installation ‘disgraceful’. This prompted Congress to pass a law prohibiting flag "desecration"—which was protested with flag burnings. Senator Bob Dole singled Tyler out, saying the law would apply specifically to his piece, as it “invited trampling on the flag”[4]. Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided to overturn the so-called Flag Protection Act, supporting that the flag is protected by the Constitution when displayed in a way to convey ideas (B. Drummond Ayres, 8 June, 1996).

During the 4-week run of A/Part of the Whole, members of veterans groups organized massive demonstrations, and some repeatedly disrupted the exhibition by removing the flag from the floor, folding it and placing it on the ledge[5]. In accordance with flag desecration laws, the SAIC posted a sign which read: “The Chicago Police Department has advised the School of the Art Institute of Chicago that it is legally permitted to exhibit the artwork ‘What Is [Etc.]’. . . They have also advised that to publicly walk on, trample . . . or defile the flag is to be guilty of a Class 4 felony and subject to arrest.” An apparently displeased viewer notified authorities that an elementary school teacher had walked on the flag – she was charged with a felony that carries a penalty of three years in prison and a $10,000 fine[6].

Republican senator Walter Dudycz, along with representatives from veterans' organizations, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and Viet-Now, orchestrated an attack on the institute. A Cook County Circuit dismissed the suit, ruling that 'the institute had not violated either state or federal laws concerning the flag, saying, “This exhibit is as much an invitation to think about the flag as it is an invitation to step on it,” reminding the court works of art are protected under the First Amendment. This ruling had little effect on the protesters outside of the school (and adjoining museum, which had nothing to do with the student exhibition).

Amidst numerous bomb threats and physical threats to students, faculty, staff and visitors to the school, security was fortified with plain-clothes police, and visitors to the gallery were restricted to eight people when it was not necessary to close the gallery due to threats.[7] The SAIC had to spend upwards of $250,000 for security during the exhibition, and the negative publicity affected the major fund-raising campaign (Goldstein, 1998). As a result of this controversy, The SAIC's government funding was cut from $70,000 to $1 and many benefactors pulled donations.

Tyler had been asked by the School to show a different piece, which he declined to do (Leepson, 2006), and was not allowed to submit "What Is The Proper Way To Display the American Flag?" for his thesis project in the schools graduation show due to the controversy already caused.

Detroit - Van Gogh’s Ear

Jef Bourgeau is a multi-media artist and founder/director of the nonprofit Museum of New Art (MoNA) in Pontiac, Michigan. In 1997, curators approached him from the Detroit Institute of Art (DIA) during an exhibition at an early incarnation of the MoNA, the Museum of Contemporary Art. The MCA was a tiny space, literally a cloakroom, in a now-defunct gallery in downtown Detroit, a sizeable (though shrinking) city that is glaringly without a contemporary counterpart to the DIA. In describing how Bourgeau works, Jan van der Marck (2007), former chief curator and curator of 20^th Century art at the DIA writes: “Bourgeau open[s] a vein … that allowed him to address and criticize the very underpinnings of the art gallery and the museum of contemporary art”... “[He] kicked the tires of the social vehicles meant to propel art.”

The curators were excited by what Mr. Bourgeau was doing, and invited him to put together an exhibition to survey the art of the past century, and a look into the next. A series of 12 one-week shows, Art Until Now was scheduled to open in late 1999, and run through February the next year. According to Bourgeau, the exhibit was meant to “explore how artists were intertwined with the art they create, particularly in the context of the artists who had gained notoriety in the 1990s” (Meredith, 1999).

After working for nearly two years, Bourgeau opened the first installment, Van Gogh’s Ear on November 17, 1999. On the day after the show opened, Graham Beal met Bourgeau inside the small gallery where Van Gogh’s Ear was mounted, and telling him that he’d just promised his board that he’d never let a Sensation through the hallowed doors of the DIA. This was the same gentleman who had turned Sensation down – three times – from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he was the director from 1996 to 1999. Beal said that he couldn’t close the exhibit, or change anything, now that it was up and the doors were open, because such actions would be considered censorship (Walsh, 24 November 1999).

The following day, Graham Beal, having stepped in as director 8 weeks before, and about to embark on a massive fund-raising campaign, closed the exhibition, fearing backlash from community members. Beal defended his decision, stating “…selection is not censorship” (Meredith, 1999). A museum spokesperson further defended Beal’s action by saying that he had been unaware of what the exhibition would contain before it opened. Bourgeau disputes this, stating that he had given curators a binder documenting the “offensive” works months before (van der Marck, 2007), and referencing past shows he’d curated, Naked in the Nineties, Closet Art, and The Wrong Show. These titles (which at the very least, are indicative of content to be looked into) should speak to museum professionals as red flags, but they were never raised.

Two pieces in the exhibit gave Beal cause to close the exhibit: “Bathtub Jesus”, a worn antique baby doll with a red rubber accountant’s finger protector in place of a penis, inside a corroded enameled tub; and “Nigger Toe”, a Brazil nut held by industrial clamps under a magnifying glass. Beal said he could not show these pieces, one “sacrilegious”, and the other containing a racial epithet, not directly alluding to the fact that Detroit is historically a racially divided city. Two other pieces referenced Sensation and the Young British Artists – one a glass container of urine, left to viewers to conclude that it was Andres Serrano’s from Piss Christ (purported to be apple cider vinegar); the other a video, credited to Tracey Emin, showing a woman in the shower during menstruation.

         In an interview one week after Van Gogh’s Ear opened, Bourgeau stated this: “Art reflects the times and this is an ‘in-your-face’, ‘push-the-buttons’ culture. He further explained the piece “Nigger Toe”, recalling that he grew up hearing the racial epithet used in common speech – he referenced a candy from childhood called “Nigger Babies” – and how placing a Brazil nut (called “nigger toes” in an unfortunate colloquialism) under a magnifying glass was a personal way of examining both sides of racism, but from a white perspective. Bourgeau rationalized if the title had been simply “Toe”, that “…only the whites that knew would have been in on it and the blacks would have been left out” (First Amendment Center, 2000).

         A few months prior to Van Gogh’s Ear, in another act of self-censorship, the DIA had removed Kara Walker’s A Means to an End: A Shadow Drama in Five Acts, a 5-panel black paper silhouette of an antebellum plantation scene (Drake, 2000). A Means to an End… was acquired as part of the DIA’s permanent collection in 1996, but was on display during an exhibit called Where the Girls Are: Print’s by Women from the DIA’s Collection. Walker is known for her silhouette work, and for dealing with subject matter such as racism and historical stereotyping, sex, sadism and bestiality.

         A Means to an End…  depicts (in silhouette) a young boy hanging from the breast of a woman; the next panel shows a young girl riding a fox backwards; a woman leaping across a ‘river’, using partially submerged heads as stepping stones; a head and hand rise out of the water; finally, the last panel depicts the plump silhouette of a man strangling the body of an emaciated girl (Shaw, 2004), while seeming to dandle her on his knee at the same time. The advisory group, Friends of African and African-American Art, African-American collectors and artists complained that Walker’s piece is offensive, that there was not a clear art-historical perspective. The DIA no longer owns A Means to an End… ; it is currently in the collection of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis – ironically, where Graham Beal was curator from 1977 to 1983.

         Bourgeau’s argument in defense of Van Gogh’s Ear was that there had been no outside complaints, as there had been in response to Sensation. Most of the complaints did come in the days after the show closed, by members of the community who had never seen it, and in which Beal again defended his decision in the Letters to the Editor section of the Detroit News ("Should DIA have cancelled exhibit?," 1999).

         Beal stated that he closed the show with the intention of postponing it until modifications could be discussed with Bourgeau and DIA curators. He went on to say that, in choosing to display controversial art, the DIA must be willing, as an institution, to fully support such work under any circumstances. In this case, he said, he did not. As well, the “modifications” were unacceptable to Bourgeau – it would no longer have been his show if pieces were removed, or titles altered.  

         Mr. Bourgeau said “They were afraid somebody might be offended - nobody ever was”, and added that few people had seen the exhibit. “The show was closed and censored from the inside, which is a new and disturbing twist for the art world.” Referencing Christina Orr-Cahall’s firing from the Corcoran, Bourgeau said, “Now, we laud a museum director for shutting down a show in its first week.” He went on to say that this is possibly the history of art of the 1990s playing itself out, and in the midst of it all, Detroit now has this controversy over an exhibit that was never seen (Meredith, 1999).

The Future of Museums and Controversial Art

            Former DIA curator (and founder and first director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago) Jan van der Marck believes that art museums are under enormous pressure to present “noncontroversial, politically correct, child-centered art”[8], and fears the increased corporate presence in the arts as a whole. In acknowledging the performance pressure imposed by boards and trustees on museums who have to raise the money, van der Marck feels that pressure can “lead to a skewing of the priorities in a museum”:

“We have a responsibility to our profession, we have a responsibility to the culture of our community, to the history of that community, to the historic record of that community, and whether we push people through the gates or not this museum is proud of what it owns, even if nobody comes to visit for a whole afternoon. The fear of failure in so many areas in our world today, including that of human intimacy—take Viagra—is greater than simple good sense. It should be acceptable that museums are only for those who truly appreciate them. Plus some who come there out of curiosity or to seek enlightenment. Plus people who come because other people tell them, ‘You must go’.”

Mr. van der Marck was employed at the DIA in the era of massive cuts in public funding for arts in Michigan, prior to which the museum received nearly 75% of it’s funding from the state. Currently, it receives just 3% (Styker, 9 November 2008), and as is the business of museums, in van der Marck’s words,  must put on a show of “courting, constant flattery… wooing”, to impress upon current benefactors that their funds are going to the best possible use, and to inspire potential benefactors to put their money toward such use. In his experience, the most successful museums are so because they get bequests from art patrons, which, in turn attracts additional gifts. From there, they build wings to expand and make room for great works of art. Unfortunately, van der Marck said, Detroit has not been very good at that game. Whether he was speaking about the city or about the museum in this context is unclear.

Conclusion

With all we’re currently exposed to from the media and inundated with, as a culture, we’re over-stimulated, but desensitized to what real personal expression can be. There is such a wealth of information and imagery available via our cable and Internet connections, and in order to compete, museums have had to promote art as entertainment. Dennis Barrie speaks of museum curators and administrator “vanilla-izing” collections, acquisitions and exhibitions in the interest of pleasing their boards (2007) – that is to say curators often play the safe card in terms of their collections and exhibition decisions. In addition, it seems that the art is no longer enough. Out of necessity to attract and entertain, museums have added, and rely heavily on, other sources of revenue in order to survive.

Proscriptive censorship rules: “Thou shalt not look.” Descriptive censorship says: “Decide if you want to look.” Proscriptive censorship regards art as a cultural barometer of moral decline.

 – Jack Fritscher, Ph.D.

The essence of modern art in general is to allow people to make up their own mind about art.

 -- Kary L. Moss, executive director of the Michigan branch of the A.C.L.U.

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