WaPo Highlights Tiny Leftist Protest of Ants-on-Christ Video Removal from Portrait Gallery

December 3rd, 2010 12:50 PM

The Washington Post will publicize the tiniest left-wing protests. Take Thursday night's protest against removing the ants-on-Christ video from the National Portrait Gallery. On the back page of the Style section (complete with a large 3 x 6 photo of protesters), Jessica Dawson reported:

Despite Thursday evening's chill, about 100 demonstrators -- many of them artists -- gathered outside Transformer Gallery to protest Tuesday's removal of David Wojnarowicz's "A Fire in My Belly" artwork from the National Portrait Gallery's "Hide/Seek" show.

"This is a sign of solidarity and a call to our lawmakers that silence equals death," said Transformer Executive Director Victoria Reis, invoking the name of the late-'80s "Silence=Death" campaign by the New York City activist group ACT UP.

Neither the protesters (nor even ACT UP) were identified as liberals or leftists. An accompanying photo slide show contained a caption guessing only "about 75" protesters showed up to suggest conservatives were dealing silence and death. Dawson merely relayed "sharp words" for Smithsonian officials and members of Congress:

It's an attack on the American people," said Chicago-based photographer Dawoud Bey, 57, a nationally recognized artist who has had solo shows at the Walker Art Center, the Queens Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts. "Lawmakers are saying that we're not smart enough to make our own decisions on what to see."

"This could have been a teaching moment, but the Smithsonian didn't have enough backbone to allow that," said Bey, who was visiting Washington this week for meetings with the National Endowment for the Arts. "It sets a very bad precedent."

The Post also offered a video of the protesters airing their complaints. Dawson blogged a letter from the Transformers Gallery attacking conservatives:

"You must know, but in the event you do not, we the undersigned are here to tell you that your right-wing critics, including in the Congress, know nothing and care nothing about art. They care not a wit about freedom of expression, or free speech, or 'the American promise of equality, inclusion and social dignity.'

Post art critic Blake Gopnik secured front-page Style territory on Friday to respond to conservative critics, claiming the Muslim world also has its iconoclastic artists (that have yet to be celebrated in a DC gallery).

The Post website did upset liberals by inviting Catholic League leader William Donohue to take online questions on Wednesday. But the paper also brought in Virginia congressman Jim Moran to smear Donohue in a Wednesday article in the paper (which came with another one-sided liberal protest video against an "anti-art and anti-intellectual agenda"):

Himself a Catholic, Moran said that Catholic League President William Donohue, who "implicitly condoned all the pedophilia that was going on in the church," should be using his energies to object to much more serious offenses against humanity.

Jacqueline Trescott's article included conservative critics like Rep. Jack Kingston, but the headline and focus was again on the liberals at the Transformers Gallery and their protests (including two guys standing outside on Tuesday). I saw only the mirror man when I saw the exhibit around 1 pm:

Late Wednesday, the gallery had secured rights from Tom Rauffenbart, executor of the artist's estate, to show the entire 30-minute original version of the artwork, which it will begin screening Thursday.

"I only wish David were alive, he would tear these censors apart," Rauffenbart said.

Other artists took to the streets, specifically the sidewalk outside the Portrait Gallery. A text message urged people to gather. Adam Griffiths, a 28-year-old artist from Takoma Park, wore handcuffs and held a mirror with the words "PUT IT BACK" written on its face. He was joined by Adrian Parsons, 28, of Washington, who carried a sign that read "National Censorship Gallery." A group of local artists has scheduled a protest outside the museum for Thursday night.

PS: Earlier, Dawson blogged the question "Norman Rockwell: Gay Icon?" Her fanciful reading of homoerotic themes into Rockwell paintings at the Portrait Gallery is self-evidently ludicrous. If you look at the paintings she cites, the term "stretch" doesn't even apply.