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Published: 10/11/2021 4:47:39 PM

A friend once told me that Northampton was too politically correct and in turn excluded people. I dont know if I agree with her, but after reading about the Art Councils decision to cancel its Biennial arts exhibit, I can see her point.

As a white woman who grew up in Philadelphia, lived in Brooklyn and New Mexico, I consider myself a person with a diverse lifestyle and values; as an art teacher, I look at things with an open mind and aesthetic value; as an older woman, I chose to reside in Northampton, my hope was that censorship of art would not be tolerated.

This article became a teachable moment for me as an art teacher. When studying art history, each era can began with controversial or reactionary art. Look at Cubism and Picasso and what he did with abstraction and rejecting a single viewpoint in paintings, breaking up facial features into shapes was considered radical and controversial. Did this stop his work from being shown?

There were many artists whose subjects chronicled what went before them, Kathe Kollwitz depicting the poverty and war happening around World War II. The question is, do you have to be part of a group to be able to make art about it? I see the painting 400 Years After no. 4 about a place and time from an artists perspective.

When we censor an artwork because of an artists interpretation of an event that they or their ancestry lived through, then we take away the artists voice or truth. Who I mainly see at fault here is the committee that canceled the show of 60 artists. It makes me think back to when I was an art student in the 1980s. The N.E.A awarded grants to exhibitions which included artists Robert Maplethorpe and Andres Serrano, their works were the highlights of a controversy surrounding the New York City mayor (who vowed to cut subsidy over art deemed offensive), religious leaders and politicians.

Art will always be the center of societal tensions. As art history shows, some of the best art portrays just that!

Bonnie Cooper

Florence

Read the original here:
Bonnie Cooper: Art censorship in the commonwealth - GazetteNET