Ken Paulson: Welcome to "Speaking Freely," a weekly conversation about the First Amendment, the arts, and America. I’m Ken Paulson, executive director of the First Amendment Center. Joining us today is Jef Bourgeau, the director of the Museum of New Art in Pontiac, Michigan, a facility described as the smallest and most innovative contemporary art museum in the world. He’s here today to talk to about his battle to protect sometimes controversial art. Welcome, Jef.

Jef Bourgeau: Thank you.

Paulson: It’s great to have you here. You know, a lot of artists have had one brush with censorship in their entire career. You spent your entire past year battling censorship. Can you tell us about your experiences in Detroit and how they came about?

Bourgeau: Detroit has had a hard time putting together a contemporary museum. We tried for 30 years to do it, different groups. And it never quite panned out. So what I did as an artist was to continue a project I'd been working on and, and call it the Museum of New Art, and took over— rendered a small space, a closet, a cloakroom from a, a gallery and then installed contemporary art in it, you know, with— without a budget. And what happened was the— some curators from the DIA, from the Detroit Institute of Arts, came down at one of the shows, thought it was exciting, went back and talked and contacted me and wanted to do a show for the millennium. It would have been in November ’99, to survey 20th century art, current art, and possibly what might be happening in the next century. And so that’s where it all began. And I worked two years on that show putting together— it was a 12-week time frame and each week would be a different show, handling different trends and currents in, in the arts. The first show was called "Van Gogh’s Ear," which was to deal with the art of the ‘90s, art of controversy, art that had been connected to cult of personality, which has a lot to do with current art, especially with young British artists. And we began with the, you know, the primo man that started it all, probably was Van Gogh and the cult that was— has been built up around him.

Paulson: So you spent all this time preparing the exhibit. It’s actually up on the walls. And then came a surprise.

Bourgeau: Wednesday we opened. Thursday the new director came down and my impression was that he had never heard about the show before, wasn’t aware of what was going on. He wasn’t too happy with it. Three of the artists that were referenced in the show were in the "Sensation" show in, in Brooklyn, and he told me that he had turned that show down three times when he was the director at the L.A. County Museum.

Paulson: So, for those who are not familiar with "Sensation" exhibit, that was in New York City. And that was the case where the art so offended the mayor of New York that he threatened to cut off funding to a museum until a court told him that was unconstitutional. So the, the content, you alluded to "Sensation." So he immediately saw in your exhibit some things that he thought were sensational.

Bourgeau: That might potentially offend somebody. What he said, "Important members of the community may be offended by this show." But he also told me at that time that he couldn’t shut it down, that to touch anything or change anything even, that that would be considered censorship.

Paulson: Within the art community, that would be an unpopular move.

Bourgeau: Yeah. And with, with his own ethics, the way I understood, he said, "I just don’t believe in that." And so he left it with leaving a, a wall warning, a label outside the, the gallery space.

Paulson: And what did that warning say?

Bourgeau: Well, it came the next day, which is a Friday now. And the contemporary curator brought it down and placed it in front of the gallery, and I, I glanced at it once before I was called back upstairs. And essentially it said the, the whole installation and series of shows were based on a museum of contemporary art, and my name was never mentioned anywhere. And so this said, you know, this work is definitely by Jef Bourgeau and some of the contents may be controversial and we suggest that you be 18 to view it. That, that sign subsequently disappeared totally and they, they said that there never was one. But I was called upstairs then for a meeting, and while I was upstairs, they pulled the gallery door shut and padlocked it, so quickly that they had locked the catalogue photographer inside when I came back. I heard a little voice inside saying, "What’s going on?"

Paulson: [Laughs] You were able to free the photographer?

Bourgeau: Yeah. Well, actually he let me back in. But what happened upstairs that it was a very short meeting where the— I had passed the new director on the way to the meeting and I, I had no idea what the short meeting was going to be about, and said, "Hi" to him. He left the building. So I was with the chief curator and the head of marketing, and what they proposed to me then was to postpone the show and to let all the curators go over each show, each item, and decide which should go in and shouldn’t go in.

Paulson: Let’s talk about what offended them, what, what was the art that, that really set them off?

Bourgeau: Well, I suppose there— other than the "Sensation" pieces, probably the— there was one "Nigger Toe," which is a Brazil nut under a magnifying glass on clamps, and "Bathtub Jesus."

Paulson: And talk about "Bathtub Jesus" and what that was in response to.

Bourgeau: It’s an antique bathtub, a leaden bathtub with a small antique doll inside with a, a finger protector in place of the penis.

Paulson: Appearing to be a condom.

Bourgeau: Well, appearing to be anything you, you wanted it to be. One, one critic wrote— since nobody saw the show and there were no images allowed out of the museum, one critic called it a "bright red penis" and another one said it was a— "an accountant’s finger protruding from a crotch." So—

Paulson: It’s whatever you think it is.

Bourgeau: Yeah. Because nobody saw any of the images, and so whatever was fed to the press, they just elaborated on that.

Paulson: It’s actually tougher to interpret art when you haven’t seen it.

Bourgeau: Exactly. It’s tough enough when you see it.

Paulson: Now this is a director, a new director who apparently came in. And, and I'm sure in his view was probably felt— he probably felt blindsided. This is— sounds to me like he had no, no information ahead of time. Was there a communication breakdown, you think, with this museum?

Bourgeau: I think so. I had, I had a lot of trouble communicating through the two years. I'd have to kind of force my way in there to have a meeting. But beyond that, I think— I do feel sympathy for him. But at the same time, he’d been there two months and he should have, you know, looked at all the, the programs and the— that were coming up.

Paulson: You mentioned—

Bourgeau: There aren’t that many at the, that museum.

Paulson: You mentioned two pieces. Now I have to ask you, you have to know if you're putting an exhibit up and, and one of the pieces of art is not only controversial but has a racial epithet in the title in the city of Detroit, a city with significant racial challenges, that that’s going to create a tremendous backlash. You had to know that going in. Is that a risk you take, or as some critics would say are you intentionally sort of taunting the system?

Bourgeau: Look, I'm a white artist. How can I deal with racism, you know? I can't. Can I?  I’ll get bombarded by everybody. But then one of the critics also wrote, who never saw the piece, that I was 'like a white rapper who tried to assume ownership of this inflammatory word'. But the inflammatory word is in the ownership of whites. I mean, we created it. And so I wanted to deal with something from that side of racism. And part of that was growing up with, with things like a Brazil nut was called a nigger toe. "Eeny meeny miney mo, catch a nigger by his toe." There was a candy up at the drugstore we used to get called Nigger Babies. And these are all things that are seeds, that create a platform for racism in whites. And that’s what I wanted to deal with, that there are two sides to racism and we have to study both sides, not just the victim but the victimizer and see where that originates and perhaps why. And that’s what I tried doing with that piece. And also to deal with that other side as well. So if I just called it "Toe," only the whites that knew would have been in on it and the blacks would have been left out.

Paulson: Would, would you— do you think they would have kept the exhibit if not for those two pieces?

Bourgeau: No. No. In fact, what they said at the meeting was— they said they were going to postpone these select pieces and also review everything else. And I said, "Whenever you do remount this show and wherever you do, will those two pieces be in it?" And they said, "No."

Paulson: So at the end of this meeting, you’ve got a padlocked facility. You’ve got invitations out to some people, you're planning an exhibit. And there will be no exhibit. How did that get left? How did the battle go on from there?

Bourgeau: Well, what happened was there was a news critic that was on her way over to view the show.

Paulson: Detroit News.

Bourgeau: Detroit News. And she came in the middle of the meetings and it was shut down. And so she was upset, and they wouldn’t let her take images and she was upset about that because it’s a public institution. They wouldn’t even let her take— initially wouldn’t even let her take an image me within the museum. So what went from there was that the Detroit News wrote— she wrote what happened and we, we all sat in the same room together talking about it. And she pretty much wrote what was spoken then. And it got on the wires and then that night I heard from Reuters and, and all the different services, news services, and it went worldwide. All this by the time I drove home, about an hour's time.

Paulson: You know, we talk a lot on this show about the First Amendment, and the First Amendment protects us from government action. In this case, although the museum has some public funding, by not showing your exhibit it technically wasn’t a violation of the First Amendment. So your legal grounds, I would think, would be somewhat limited. In the end, they, they did give you a settlement, didn’t they?

Bourgeau: Yes. But to go back to that question, I think it was a major offense because it’s a public institution. And their job is to present, and to preserve history of the art both of the past and the present and to enlighten us about it. And that’s, that’s their mission, their goal, which supposedly is written into their mission statement.

Paulson: Well, certainly the spirit of the First Amendment comes in, the spirit of free expression which is driven by the First Amendment. I, I know that you then accepted a payment. What did they do? Did they describe it as a settlement or was it compensation or—

Bourgeau: Well, they wouldn’t talk to me at all after that first meeting. So what I did was what I did before when I couldn’t get meetings to talk about the proposed work. I just knew that if I wandered around the museum long enough that I'd run into somebody. I ran into the chief curator and I said, "Can I have a, a short talk with you about some sort of compromise?" I knew that they would throw out all— there are 12 shows. I knew ten of them they would just throw out, you know, as far as selecting, they would have just thrown them out altogether 'cause I was involved with them. The last two shows involved a hundred artists outside, people like Vito Acconci and Peter Halley and Jenny Holzer and a lot of regional artists, too, that I had managed to put together. And I wanted to save those 'cause part of the call for entry said that you'd be showing at the DIA. So I said, "Look, we can compromise. Throw out all my work, put this innocuous show in and we can shake hands and say, ‘Look, you know, we came to a settlement.’" And so he said, "I’ll get back to you in a week." What happened within that week was they called a pro bono lawyer that had stepped forward to, to work for me and called him and said, "You know, that— " They wouldn't give me any calls and they said that the lawyers had taken over and they want to give a payment. And I said, "But I don’t want a payment. What am I going to do with a payment, you know?" So what I decided to do with it was to accept it on the grounds that I could use it as seed money to open a real contemporary museum in downtown Detroit, which has happened.

Paulson: And you’ve done that in Pontiac. And, and talk a little bit about that and about yet another brush with authority and the content of your art there in Pontiac.

Bourgeau: Well, at the time of the DIA incident, a lot of galleries and, and other local people came forward and they wanted me to do a, a symposium and maybe show the work that had been censored. And I said, "No." First of all, I was too close. Second of all, it wouldn’t be the same context. I wouldn’t want to show the same work. So what happened was we waited six months. They approached me again and I said, "Let’s go ahead with it." The issues are still there. In Australia they had to cancel the "Sensation" show at the National Museum, so it was happening all over the place. And there were a lot of other issues. So we went ahead with it and my job was to, to curate in one gallery artwork that had been censored or had been considered controversial. And the symposium was put together upstairs in a lecture hall and we had a good panel. Dennis Berry was the keynote featured speaker, who didn’t, who didn’t arrive, but anyhow it was a good group besides (Inaudible). But what happened was, when I would begin to set up the show, what I wanted to do with the show was— the First Amendment protects our— it doesn't protect anything that’s obscene, and a lot of people say that a lot of this art is obscene. So I wanted to take that— the opposite tack. You know, you can put something in a museum and, and may present it nicely enough and it’s art. I wanted to take the opposite. I wanted to present it as, as pornography. So I ripped the images out of, of magazines and books that I bought at, at galleries, at the Detroit Institute of Arts, even. And, and just plastered them on the walls in a collage like you would in your bedroom if you're into porn. And it was effective. The janitor across the hallway protested as I began setting it up.

Paulson: [Laughs]

Bourgeau: And there were huge plate glass windows between the lobby and, and the coffee house where he worked. So I, I covered those with, with paper. And I also put up, put up two warning labels saying that— suggest that you be 18 to view the show. The day of the, of the opening of the actual show, he came in and, and insisted that I cover the front windows and, and give him a special space within that, that gallery where he would set up his own installation of, of water in bottles, and he would tell people that it was wine. Because if I could tell people this was art, then this was wine.

Paulson: This is, this is a janitor?

Bourgeau: This is a janitor, yes.

Paulson: [Laughs]

Bourgeau: At which point I told him, you know, I've accommodated you as much as I, I could, you know. And he threatened to call the press, the FBI, and the police. The only one that responded was the press, which was great because he’s— there are five galleries in that building, actually seven at that time. And they, they all said, "We've been five years for the press to come out and review anything here."

Paulson: Well, let’s talk about the issue of obscenity. In one of your interviews, you said, "If it’s art, it can't be obscene." Does that mean that if you took, took something from the pages of child pornography and put it in a frame, that that suddenly would be art?

Bourgeau: And you put it in a museum or gallery, it would be considered art.

Paulson: And, in your view— I mean, you think the courts would view it that way?

Bourgeau: I think so.

Paulson: But it almost sounds like a frame and matting or whatever and a museum wall would—

Bourgeau: Validates it, legitimizes it as art. So I wanted to— I wanted the art to try to prove itself that it isn't obscene and that it is art.

Paulson: And the images you took and put on the wall that were torn from magazines were from art magazines and, and some of the exhibit content really goes back quite a ways.

Bourgeau: Oh, some to the 5th century BC—

Paulson: Can you talk about some of the early images that, that people would have found offensive?

Bourgeau: Well, there’s a Roman— of course you know the Pompeii frescoes and stuff like that, which are pretty erotic. The, the one that the police took a picture of was Courbet’s "Origin of the World" that he painted in 1867.

Paulson: And the police found that particularly dangerous.

Bourgeau: Yeah. They, they took a photograph of that. They took— you have to understand that most of the images, you know, 99 percent of them were just naked people, not doing— involved in anything sexual at all.

Paulson: Well, you’ve just made a leap from the janitor being upset to a mention of the police. Tell us how they got involved.

Bourgeau: Well, Friday was the opening. The press came and did a story on it. And, you know, how do we, you know, save our children from this sort of thing. The next morning, the police were waiting there for me before we opened up the gallery. And they were a little rough. They wanted to get inside and take photographs. And I said, "I'm not sure what my rights are. I'd like to talk to a lawyer." And I have a friend who was with me who went upstairs to call at his gallery. And they said, "If you don’t let us in, we’re gonna arrest you." And I said— the guy came back down and said, "The lawyer’s on the way." And he said, "Don’t let them in." And they turned to him and said, "If you don’t let us in, we’ll arrest you." You know, if you say another word.

Paulson: [Laughs]

Bourgeau: So I said, "I guess we don’t have any options. We’ll let you in." And then they began to take pictures inside, close-up Polaroids of the work, at which point I stepped in front of them and got the camera and said, "You know, look, the complaint’s from the sidewalk, you should be taking photos from the sidewalk." "If you step in front of us again, you're obstructing police business and we’ll arrest you." Fine. So, I got my camera and began taking pictures of them. It was such a strange situation.

Paulson: You're taking pictures of—

Bourgeau: Of police.

Paulson: Taking pictures.

Bourgeau: Taking pictures of what they consider pornography, and then examining the Polaroids and looking at them and seeing if they got the right angle in the shot. It was just— it was too strange.

Paulson: There's a, there's a future show in this for, for you of those photos. And, and then the upshot was they actually cited you, right?

Bourgeau: They cited me with obscenity and I could have spent three, three months in jail and a $500 fine.

Paulson: That made it a misdemeanor. Was it a misdemeanor or obscenity charge?

Bourgeau: I suppose so.

Paulson: Yeah. So it was the lowest end, low end obscenity charge. But nonetheless, there was potential jail time for you.

Bourgeau: Well, it's the only one on their books.

Paulson: And, and this was acting on a complaint—

Bourgeau: From the janitor.

Paulson: — from the janitor.

Bourgeau: Again, in both cases, only one person complained. And we joked about that before my show opened at the, the DIA, that it can only take one person to, to ruin something. And at the museum it was the director. There you did the gamut. And at— in Pontiac it was the janitor, you know?

Paulson: So in this one, the First Amendment does kick in. And, and clearly, that’s significant protection. And, and when they decided to look at prosecuting this, what happened?

Bourgeau: The ACLU had contacted me originally, and I said, "I think I have a lawyer, you know? I don’t want to get this blown out of proportion." So then I called them and I said, "I need you." And they came in and they were pretty excited about it 'cause we had a good case. And we went to court expecting— they wanted to do a deal initially and we wouldn’t. So I expected it to go to trial, but the city attorney asked that it be dismissed. They said that since I, I covered the windows and had moved the, the show upstairs – which I hadn’t but I wasn't gonna interrupt the guy—

Paulson: [Laughs]

Bourgeau: — that we should dismiss the charges. So there were— but in another sense— what— the reason why I put the show together and I was ready for a fight, I didn’t want it, of course— but to prove that this is art. I mean, it’s still out there. What happens in these things is, is it gets in the papers, like my show where nobody saw the images. It polarizes and disrupts the public and their, their view of what contemporary art is. They think it’s something they don’t need. And what's interesting about contemporary art is, is it’s, it’s exactly that. It’s something that has changed. It’s become more about— less about beauty and more about ideas. It addresses everyone now where before it was more the elite. And these people are, are being driven away from it by these cases. And I had hoped to prove somehow that, you know, that this was art and that it had value.

Paulson: And does that exhibit continue? Do you— is the exhibit still up at Pontiac?

Bourgeau: No. It lasted three weeks and it was taken down.

Paulson: I see. But the, the museum continues, still funded in part by the settlement?

Bourgeau: Yeah. The, the seed money for the Museum of New Art was from the settlement. And we've— we’re legitimate. We open October 13th with our first show. We have a board. Everything’s, you know, up and up and great. And I've become a suit. I can't be an artist for the moment because of conflict of interests. So—

Paulson: I'm struck by your comment earlier about how they were grateful anyone would come out to look at the show. Isn’t this kind of a double-edged sword, though, when you, when you get some kind of notoriety, when you get that kind of attention because of, of content that is perceived to be controversial, suddenly you— there’s a validation of the show, of the art, there’s attention that never would have been paid before. Is that all negative?

Bourgeau: No, I— it’s not all negative. I don’t think the museum would be up and running if, if it were. It just points to what's wrong in, in the art community. What pointed it to here was that there’s no forum for this sort of art. There’s no— so there’s no way to discuss it. There’s no way for the public to be involved as— in the process of, of deciding what is or isn't art. And that we need a contemporary museum.

Paulson: You know, there was a time, I think, when a museum director who decided to shut down a show would have been driven out of the business. What, what’s going on now?

Bourgeau: Well, that, that happened in ’89 at the Corcoran. Christina Orr Cahill was, was fired for, for censorship. And, and what's interesting in this case was the new director, Beall, was— he saved his job by censorship. So it’s trying to understand what, what's happened in the art world. I don’t— I'm not sure. I think a lot of it has to do with, with the way that, that museums are run anymore, that they’re, they’re more about— they’ve become a business. They are a business, and so they become— they take on corporate strategies. So the person that dealt with me wasn’t the director of the DIA. It was the marketing person that made all the decisions. And I'm— whenever I talked to her, I'm thinking, why am I talking to you, you know? You don’t run this museum. But it was all about self-image and putting out that image in corporate strategies. And I think all that helps and comes about because of what's happened with the NEA and other government agencies pulling back from museums because they show controversial work. And they don’t want to do it. Jesse Helms. And corporations taking over that and, and how do we satisfy the corporations? When the, the museum director came and spoke with me, he said, "I just spoke with the board and told them I'd never show anything controversial." And then he walks into this, and so he put himself in a corner. So I do have some sympathy with them and I understand museums have that all the time. We've had it already at, at the new museum. There was— we had a show up of young German artists and Wolfgang Kilmins had some with— of male nudes. And a potential donor was gonna come and one of the board members called me to ask me if I'd cover those pieces up for him, you know? It’s there and it’s all about us. And it’s about, about getting money and funds for the museums and how do you satisfy everybody?

Paulson: Well, do you think America has changed some, that, that there’s less tolerance for—

Bourgeau: Well, that, that’s part of, of what it’s about, too. I think that, that with "Nigger Toe," political correctness has kind of backfired and, and pushed in a corner where we don’t talk – really talk – about the issues. So I did a show once where there were all these starched white shirts in a row and the Ku Klux Klan manual, the Kloran, was in one of the pockets. And a rich collector came in that I knew and I, I told about the piece, and, you know, that just hidden under the surface is racism that we don’t want to talk about. And he said, "There’s no racism in America." I said, "You gotta be kidding." I said, "Texaco— " it was at that time, that executives there had taped themselves, you know, saying, "We gotta," you know, use some racial slurs to say, "We gotta take this nigger," or whatever, "put him here." And he said, "It’s an isolated incident, you know. There’s no racism." And he walked out feeling that way. And I think that part of that is, is that you, you don’t want to face the issues. And there was another fellow that’s a black art historian and he didn’t— he thought that the museum should have kept its commitment, but he also said it would be difficult for him to explain the, the label to his grandchildren. But, in other words, to protect them from that. And I think that all has to do with, with this idea of political correctness, with not talking about things and maybe it’ll go away.

Paulson: Is there anything that you’ve seen as a consumer of art, as a viewer of art, that so offended you that you would have the impulse to censor?

Bourgeau: Well, I never had the impulse to censor but at least to talk about it. What I was doing in that show with the DIA was referring to these pieces with, with satire and humor to try to buffer first viewers from the work and to discuss it. And, and— but I don’t think that that would be anything that should be censored. I think that there’s horrible work out there probably, but you should talk about it and is it or isn't it art. What, what's happening now, too, is by avoiding this stuff, and the DIA did this as well— when they brought me in, there was— there still is no art of the ‘90s in the contemporary museum section there at the galleries, and that’s, you know— how can you call yourself contemporary if you don’t— if you wipe out ten years?

Paulson: Tell me if there’s a, a loss. Tell me, you know, in a society where you have provocative art, there are gonna be people who say, "Look, this is, this is ugly, this isn't art. It’s only designed to shock." What do you lose by not exhibiting that?

Bourgeau: Well, that, that’s back to my point. It’s because, you know, art is— contemporary art is a cultural exchange of the here and now. And if you wait and, and you say we can’t show this 'cause it’s too upsetting now, then it, it loses its real voice, which is to, you know, the current audience. And it, it becomes an, an artifact or historical document that goes back and says, "Well, this is what this decade was about." And it doesn’t really have the impact that it’s supposed to. And then you can't play that game because then you lose a lot of that art, too. Because some of the stuff that might have been good and might have potentially had, had an impact on, on the community is lost. And it loses its real voice. And that’s why you have to show it, you know? Good and bad. If it’s considered art, you show it. And then you decide, history decides it. And you can't play the safe game.

Paulson: You can't play the safe game. A great argument against censorship. Thank you for joining us today. It’s been a great conversation.

Bourgeau: Thanks for inviting me.

Paulson: Our guest today has been artist Jef Borgeau. I'm Ken Paulson, back next week with another conversation about the First Amendment, the arts, and America. I hope you can join us then for "Speaking Freely."