When is it okay to censor art? Mary Abbe explains it all to you, in an article entitled "Gun show at Minneapolis Institute of Arts misfires":
The show is... impeccably grounded in cultural history and museum practice. Even so, it feels wrong in both time and place. Minnesota's recent gun-law changes make the museum look especially hypocritical. Like most cultural organizations, it bans guns and displays signs to that effect at each entrance. Yet the show celebrates and fetishizes certain types of guns: rich people's.Ew! Guns and rich people! Hide the children! Perhaps Our Betters would find it acceptable if each gun was displayed immersed in a vat of urine. Stupid cow.The exhibition, which the museum organized, was in the works long before the new gun law was passed, but the debate about the role of guns in American life is age-old. For an art museum to start buying and showing guns -- even beautifully crafted, historically resonant models -- can be read only as an endorsement of gun culture. That's both unnecessary and offensive.
(Via Gregory Hlatky.)
Posted by Andrea Harris at July 19, 2003 04:50 PMWhat an ugly, hateful piece of writing. We all know what a great writer the Star Tribune has available; why'd they have to send this beeyatch?
My aesthetic appreciation of the artistry of museum grade metalwork is totally separate from my appreciation of how fortunate the woman I later married was to have an inexpensive unadorned firearm when the door of her apartment was kicked in by a man much bigger and heavier than herself.
Posted by: triticale at July 19, 2003 at 11:41 PM