Can a Great Museum City Survive the Censorious Right?

When police removed four photographs by Sally Mann from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in early January Marshall K Harris a former NFL player-turned-local artist wasn t surprised Local politics had been shifting to the right not long ago especially since the polling of conservative firebrand Tim O Hare as Tarrant County judge in Furthermore a nationwide cultural shift toward right-wing censorship evident in activist book-banning efforts across Texas in the past limited years had been further invigorated since the reelection of President Donald Trump in November Harris wasn t shocked either when the photos much-lauded and long-controversial s pictures of Mann s young children nude were held as evidence for more than three months in what may be the the majority major police inspection of a museum art show in the United States since Instead what amazed Harris was the silence that predominated across the Fort Worth art scene surrounding the matter Harris who was a standout defensive end at Fort Worth s Texas Christian University before his four-year NFL career is one of insufficient outspoken voices in an art group on edge in the face of an ascendant right-wing political force For an institution like the Modern to be caught in this situation and then everybody goes silent he communicated me in February Everybody You can t talk to anyone And I sort of wonder if me opening my big mouth puts me at liability of reaction Nobody wants to say anything to possibly get themselves in any trouble The photographs seized by police in early January and at last returned to the museum in April after a grand jury declined to issue indictments in the matter are from Mann s Immediate Family series which includes both nude and clothed images of her children growing up on a remote Virginia farm The photos removed from the Modern include a shot of the torso and genital region of Mann s approximately -year-old son after eating a Popsicle that dripped down his naked body and another wider shot of Mann s approximately -year-old daughter jumping naked onto a picnic table Mann s three children are all now in their s or deceased they were involved as adults in selecting Immediate Family nudes for inclusion in Mann s memoir published in THE PHOTOS IN IMMEDIATE FAMILY HAVE DRAWN DEBATE SINCE MANN FIRST SHARED THEM WITH THE MASSES IN The photos were dogged by argument in the s and they still make particular viewers uncomfortable at present But they have also become part of the mainstream canon of American photography admired by a great number of as beacons of autobiographical art Mann did not respond to requests for an interview for this story Nor did the Gagosian Gallery which loaned the photos to the Modern The Modern has announced very little beyond noting that the works in question have been widely published and exhibited for more than years in leading cultural institutions across the country and around the world Other Fort Worth museums city council members and several artists with work in the same exhibition as Mann s photos all ignored or declined requests for interviews Largest part remarkably city police refused to release any information pertaining to the inspection arguing among other reasons that records of alleged or suspected abuse or neglect of a child are confidential As details failed to trickle out members of the Fort Worth arts area shared gossip looking for answers and mostly came up empty I m trying to get a better handle on it but every single employee at the Modern has been narrated not to talk about this at all disclosed Wesley Kirk of the nonprofit Help Fort Worth Art I ve been surprised that Kimbell and Amon Carter haven t been speaking up because this sets a bad precedent Kimbell Art Museum Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth form a trinity of world-class well-endowed art museums in the heart of one of the greater part conservative big cities in the United States Until not long ago this had not led to inhabitants confrontations I ve lived here for -something years and I ve seen all sorts of things at those museums that a few people would consider inappropriate and others would not explained Lauren Saba proprietor of the Fort Works Art gallery I hope this is an isolated event Saba noted that in November her gallery ran an exhibition of provocative art called Ban This Show including a video titled God Save Abortion by Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot and received no pushback Yet it s challenging to consider the events at the Modern as entirely isolated In October Amon Carter s exhibit Cowboy which promised to disrupt the homogenous ideal of the cowboy as a White cisgender American male and showcase the diverse manifestations of this figure across communities shut down without explanation and reopened a week later with a trigger warning The show featured images of naked men swimming together and men in cowboy getups partner-dancing and kissing The origin of the police-led art heist lay in a population backlash stoked by local conservative media institutions and politicians Sharayah and Scott Colter respectively the communications director and CEO for the Danbury Institute a religious-rights group with Baptist roots went to see the Mann photos in December at the Modern after an article in a right-wing news outlet the Dallas Express called the works pornographic The Colters upon seeing the photos for themselves were horrified It was even worse than we imagined noted Sharayah who splits time between Dallas and Washington D C We did not even take pictures of it because we don t want that kind of content on any of our devices It s really obscene material It definitely does not belong in a museum It should never have been taken in the first place And yes I do believe it belongs with the police The Danbury Institute then gathered around signatures for an open letter invoking Biblical principles to call for the Modern to remove the Mann nudes Colter revealed she didn t know how the Fort Worth police review came to be She credited the Dallas Express a nonprofit outlet that repurposed the name of a defunct Black-owned paper and routinely promotes the causes of its publisher GOP megador and hotelier Monty Bennett which published a series of alarmist articles by Carlos Turcios preceding the police analysis Colter also praised Bo French leader of the Tarrant County Republican Party and Tarrant County Judge Tim O Hare for being early to comment on the issue Before the police action O Hare informed the Dallas Express that the photos should be taken down at once and investigated by law enforcement for any and all possible criminal violations In an email French advised me that Mann s photos could even be construed as child pornography He was particularly critical of text describing Mann posing her children naked moody and in suggestive situations to evoke an edgy dark side of childhood that appeared on the wall at the Modern That should repulse everyone except perhaps the most of vile degenerates French mentioned An unidentified person walks across the main entrance of The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in December AP Photo Donna McWilliam Particular in Fort Worth see O Hare s hand in the probe Kirk reported an case like this would not have happened before O Hare won office as county judge two years ago Indeed O Hare has taken a hardline approach on far-right pet issues During his tenure he s pushed to withhold funding from groups helping at-risk children over their views on LGBTQ issues agitated for restrictive voting laws to benefit Republicans and shown a draconian streak by ordering the removal of a pastor from a populace meeting for speaking over his allotted time Since his days as the young mayor of suburban Farmers Branch complaining about undocumented immigrants to national media like CNN and pressing for Chili s-type restaurants rather than more authentically Mexican establishments in town he s displayed a gift for knowing which issues will rally conservative backing But a county judge is an executive position in the county governing body analogous to the mayor of a city O Hare has no formal role in law enforcement It remains unclear who or what pushed the Fort Worth Police Department FWPD to pursue an study with no clear precedent among thriving criminal prosecutions Since the photos were returned an additional baffling detail has emerged FWPD spent on journey to New York City to investigate critical leads pertaining to Mann s photos which are already among the best-studied and most-discussed works in U S contemporary art The photos in Immediate Family have drawn disagreement since Mann first shared them with the society in A New York Times Magazine article that year questioned Mann s fitness as a mother A Wall Street Journal editorial went further calling for the photos to be censored The uproar played an fundamental role in bringing the work to a wider audience That exposure in turn attracted a stalker to Mann s youngest daughter causing difficulties for Mann s family for years The frightening trade-offs of this sort of expression now the sort of thing that all parents must consider in the era of social media are enough to make numerous viewers queasy Mann s a very controversial figure Saba reported I think if you poll moms you get a half-and-half reaction Mann has often been in the position of having to defend her art Her stated impetus to make what she calls her family pictures was a mix of motherly adoration and deep fascination with her children s private world growing up on the same family farm where Mann herself had spent her childhood In the pictures of my children I celebrated the maternal passion their bodies inspired in me how could I not and never thought of them sexually or in a sexual context she wrote in her memoir a portion of which was excerpted in the New York Times Magazine In the memoir excerpt Mann recounted being shocked and disoriented by the s-era backlash She was distressed when the Wall Street Journal published a portrait of her unclothed daughter with black bars censoring her nakedness additions that Mann noted mutilated her innocence and made the work appear scandalous The Dallas Express in December replicated the Journal s approach when publishing Mann s photos It s unclear how FWPD could have expected that this criminal review would end in conviction The First Amendment s protection of free expression is very broad explained Lee Rowland executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship NCAC Two narrow exceptions are carved out for obscenity and child pornography But Mann s work does not qualify as either Under a -year-old ruling in Miller v California an expression must lack any serious artistic literary or scientific value to qualify as obscenity It s basically impossible for a work of art hung in a museum selected by trained curators to be seen to lack such value For someone of Sally Mann s stature and longevity the idea that her work and photography has no value does not even meet the laugh test and it certainly doesn t meet the test for obscenity Rowland declared A separate legal test for child pornography depends on showing a child in a sexual activity or in a way intended to arouse the viewer Rowland added Just depicting nudity is not enough to fail this test under U S code and -year-old precedent in New York v Ferber It s very crucial that the definition of child pornography remain narrow and tethered to those realities for the simple reason that child nudity is a utterly natural and rather massive part of childhood existence and it is widely celebrated as a cultural matter Rowland commented pointing to the a large number of depictions of nude baby Jesus over the centuries Child nudity itself may be challenging for certain people but it is widely culturally accepted as a natural and non-sexual part of growing up Throughout American history police have steered clear of dictating what should and shouldn t be allowed in museums apart from a single affair in when employees of Cincinnati s Contemporary Arts Center were prosecuted and eventually acquitted for displaying photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe including nude adults in BDSM poses and two nude images of children That episode came at the peak of a previous era of tradition war which may now be on the point of developing out anew Then as now sexual identity played a shadowy role in the right s censorious fervor Mapplethorpe was gay having died of AIDS a year before the exhibition The original Dallas Express article decrying Mann s photographs also alerted readers to photos in the Modern show depicting LGBTQ content including an autobiographical video about parenthood by queer and nonbinary artist Jess Dugan Advertisement It s almost like Tim O Hare is reading a script written by Jesse Helms years ago observed Natalie Zelt a postdoc at the University of Texas at Austin who leads a collaborative scholarly project on the history of photography curation called Framing the Field Helms was a Republican U S senator who used Mapplethorpe among other controversial artists as a wedge to change the way the National Endowment for the Arts funded artists This summer the Trump administration has made major cuts to the endowment s programs an assault on the institution not seen since Helms era The police inquiry in Fort Worth may be over but its effects could be long-lasting in the local museum and art scene Multiple locals and experts expressed concern that the city s museums would be more hesitant to show any work that might offend political officeholders or activists or put board members and donors in jeopardy Elizabeth Larison director of the Arts Society Advocacy Operation at NCAC worried that such an outcome reduces the display of art to the lowest common denominator Regardless of the courage of museum administrators big-name artists may not want to or even be allowed by insurance companies to bring their expensive works to a town where an overzealous police department could seize them for extended periods on thin legal pretense Artists of that caliber they re going to look at the Fort Worth area with chosen skepticism warned Harris the ex-NFL performer Like Do I even want to enter into that fray On the other side of the equation right-wing censors are emboldened and looking beyond the city limits Rowland described a push across several GOP-controlled states including Texas Florida and Oklahoma to beef up obscenity laws There is a real concerted effort to change the definition to apply effectively to all images of nudity not just children she explained In the Texas GOP platform for the first item on the criminal and civil justice agenda calls for changes to the penal code to broaden obscenity enforcement In the December article on Mann s photos in the Dallas Express GOP state Representative David Lowe who represents part of the Fort Worth area was quoted promising legislative action this year It is crucial that our legal framework leaves no room for predators to misuse the realm of art to display child nudity he stated Turcios Should any loopholes exist we are prepared to address and eliminate them in the upcoming legislative session in Texas In March Lowe introduced a bill in the Texas House of Representatives which would have created a mechanism for civil penalties against museums that display certain obscene or harmful material The measure never got a hearing but as Texas Republicans continue to push the envelope on culture-war issues it s easy to imagine it returning soon in chosen form In other words what started in Fort Worth this January could soon affect museums across Texas and perhaps eventually elsewhere in the country Silence may not be enough to forestall it The post Can a Great Museum City Survive the Censorious Right appeared first on The Texas Observer