Protesters Triumph Over Works of Art
Artists and museums are often in the thick of free speech debates. Typically the art world holds its ground, emerging bruised but resolute.
But in two recent controversies, the protesters seem to be winning.
The Guggenheim Museum in New York decided to pull three major works from a highly anticipated exhibition after pressure from animal-rights supporters and others over the show “Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World.” This, together with the recent move by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis to dismantle Sam Durant’s sculpture “Scaffold” in response to protests, has art leaders concerned that museums are setting worrisome precedents.
“When an art institution cannot exercise its right for freedom of speech, that is tragic for a modern society,” the artist Ai Weiwei said, referring to the Guggenheim’s decision. “Pressuring museums to pull down artwork shows a narrow understanding about not only animal rights but also human rights.”
The three works in the Guggenheim’s just- opened show were created between 1993 and 2003 and were intended to symbolically depict oppression in China.
One video, “Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other,” shows four pairs of pit bulls on nonmotorized treadmills, trying to fight even as they struggle to touch. Another video, “A Case Study of Transference,” shows two pigs mating in front of an audience. And an installation — “Theater of the World,” a central work of the show — features hundreds of live crickets, lizards, beetles, snakes, and other insects and reptiles under an overhead lamp.
Protesters marched outside the museum, and an online petition demanded “cruelty-free exhibits” at the Guggenheim. The museum said in a statement the works were removed “out of concern for the safety of its staff, visitors and participating artists.” The museum added: “Freedom of expression has always been and will remain a paramount value of the Guggenheim.”
For many artists and museum professionals, the latest moves at the Guggenheim and the Walker amount to an artistic capitulation in the face of heightened political sensitivities that have been amplified by social media.
“Museums are here to show works that are difficult, uncomfortable, provocative,” said Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in New York State. “The chilling effect of this, of course, is museums will now look to make exhibitions that won’t in any way offend.”
PEN America, a free- expression advocacy group, called the Guggen- heim’s decision “a major blow to artistic freedom.”
In the case of the Walker, Dakota Indian leaders argued that Mr. Durant’s two- story structure in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden — which aimed to evoke gallows throughout United States history — brought back painful memories and trivialized the executions of the United States-Dakota war in 1862.
Some museums have resisted pressure. In March, protesters blocked Dana Schutz’s painting in the Whitney Biennial in New York based on open- coffin photographs of the mutilated body of Emmett Till, the teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955. The Whitney kept the painting on view.
Some applauded the Guggenheim’s decision.
“It’s the right thing to do,” said Stephen F. Eisenman, an art history professor at Northwestern University outside of Chicago who has written extensively about the ethics of using animals in art. “The works are cruel and support cruelty and give sanction to animal abuse, and it’s right that they should pull them.”
Ingrid Newkirk, the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, also commended the museum “for withdrawing these vile acts of cruelty masked as creativity.”
“China has no laws protecting animals, so withdrawing these pieces may help the country and its artists recognize that animals are not props and that they deserve respect,” she said.
Sarah Cohen, an art historian at the University at Albany in New York State, questioned why the Guggenheim included the works at all.
“The curators themselves do not appear to have considered very deeply the problem of humans forcing certain behaviors in animals,” she said in an email. “Nor did they apparently stop to consider that using pigs as performers to ‘inform’ human spectators about their cultural hangups is a shopworn strategy — as old as dancing bears and the circus.”
“In my opinion,” she added, “the exploitation of animals to make artistic points is, well, bad art.”