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A lecture given at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University, October 4, 2016.

I was curator of Performing Arts at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from 1988 through 1996. Our mission was to be a catalyst for the creative expression of artists and the active engagement of audiences. We presented 100 performances each season in theatres ranging from 100 to 4,800 seats. Given the mission, I at times produced identity-based performance work; some of which became entangled in the Culture Wars of the 1990s.

First some context: in 1989, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded $8.4 million in artists fellowships. This represented the apex of these awards. It was also the year photographer Robert Mapplethorpe died of AIDS and Senator Jesse Helms eliminated New York Gay Mens Health Crisis grant of $600,000, objecting to queer content in sex education material.

In 1989, two NEA grants came under political fire. The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania used a NEA grant to mount a retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpes work, entitled "The Perfect Moment," that included homoerotic photographs that some in Congress deemed pornographic. The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC canceled this exhibition anticipating the content would trigger a political storm on Capitol Hill. Members of Congress also objected to The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Arts in Winston-Salem re-granting NEA dollars to Andres Serrano because of his Piss Christ photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine.

Cultural Infidels To mark the start of the 90s, the Walker put together a multidisciplinary festival, Cultural Infidels. Historical films by iconoclasts Andy Warhol and Jack Smith were juxtaposed with John Greysons Urinal and Isaac Juliens Looking for Langston. Kathy Acker read from her latest writing, and we exhibited one of David Wojnarowiczs lithographs. Art and culture were politicized; this is nothing new, and we were eager to support the present day provocateurs.

Karen Finley performed her profoundly moving We Keep Our Victims Ready. The first night was sold out. Two plainclothes police officers introduced themselves, telling me they were sent to determine if the performance should be closed down. Since this was the first night, I wondered why someone had complained to the police without having seen the work. The vice squad left midway through; there was nothingpornographic.

Critical and audience reaction was rapturous. However, syndicated columnists Evans and Novak wrote about the vice squad visit in The Washington Post, catching the attention of Jesse Helms staff. No mention was made of the quality of the performance, only that the vice squad visited the museum in Minneapolis.

Two months later, Holly Hughes made her Walker debut reading an excerpt of Raw Meat as part of P.S. 122s Field Trips. She returned twice more performing World Without End and No Trace of the Blonde.

Culture Wars Later that year, still in 1990, choreographer Bill T. Jones spoke to me about a new dance he wanted to create. His partner Arnie Zane had given the title on his deathbed: Last Supper at Uncle Toms Cabin. I invited Bill to be in residence in partnership with the University ofMinnesota.

Still grieving Arnies death from AIDS, Jones wanted to find hope as a gay black man in America. He envisioned a final resolving tableau of fifty-two nude bodies of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, ages, and genders. Local dancers, including students from the University of Minnesota dance department, augmented his company.

Before the performance at Northrop Auditorium, word came down that the university did not want students to be nude. Despite the warning, they all dancednude.

Some months later, Rev. Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church crowd protested Last Supper At Uncle Toms Cabin when it was performed in their home state at the University of Kansas.

Also in 1990: Keith Haring, who designed Bill T. Jones Secret Pastures, died of AIDS, and Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Centers Dennis Barrie was charged with obscenity for exhibiting Robert Mapplethorpes photographsthough after a ten-day trial, all charges weredropped.

Senator Jesse Helms pressured the NEA, and individual artist grants to Karen Finley, John Fleck, Tim Miller, and Holly Hughes were denied after being recommended by a peer panel. In a lawsuit, the defendants alleged that the NEA and NEA Chairperson John E. Frohnmayer violated their constitutional rights by wrongly turning down their applications for grants. (The Supreme Court eventually ruled in the artists favor in 1998.)

In 1990, Decency Amendment language was added to reauthorization language for the agency. All NEA recipients were required to sign a decency form. The Walker signed it. There was nothing indecent in what wepresented.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival, New Yorks Public Theater, Bella Lewitzky, Elisabeth Streb, and a few other artists refused. I spoke to Bella about it later. During the McCarthy hearings in the 50s, she was subpoenaed to appear before his committee, but slammed the door on the agent telling him, My dear, I am a dancer, not an opera singer. She was not going to capitulate forty years later.

The following year, 1991, on Easter Sunday, I presented Diamanda Gals Plague Mass at The Guthrie Theatre. The Goth kids loved their high priestess depiction of unbearable grief from the AIDS pandemic.

1992 saw Walker presentations of Ron Vawters brilliant Roy Cohn/Jack Smith juxtaposing the closet conservative lawyer with the flamboyant performance artist, as well as Reza Abdohs visceral treatise on serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, The Law of Remains. Abdohs piece was performed in an empty warehouse. The audiences followed deconstructed tableaus of violence, madness, and mayhem, moving through the building and sitting on the raw floor.

Tim Miller performed My Queer Body that spring. On World AIDS Day, Will Parker sang from the AIDS Quilt Songbook; his last concert before he died of AIDS. Two years later, Minnesota Composers Forum, Arts Over AIDS, and the Walker produced a Minnesota AIDS Quilt Songbook entitled Heartbeats.

Ben Cameron, then head of the NEAs Theater Program, asked me to be on the Individual Artists panel that year. Given whom I had presented, I wondered if he knew who I was. Of course I do, thats why I want you on the panel, he assured me. Holly Hughes and Tim Miller received grants.

David Wojnarowicz died of AIDS at age thirty-seven in 1992, two years after he won a historic Supreme Court Case over an incident in which Donald Wildmon and his American Family Association distorted his visual art in a conservative fund-raising campaign.

In 1993, Huck Snyder, designer for Bill T. Jones Last Supper at Uncle Toms Cabin, died of AIDS. The Walker showed Derek Jarmans film Blue. The screen was filled with Yves Klein blue, devoid of moving images, with voice-over narration from Jarmans diaries. This blue was the color Jarman had experienced while being administered eye drops to fend off blindness from AIDS. A year later, Jarman wasdead.

Actor Ron Vawter died of AIDS in 1994, as did the fierce Marlon Riggs, who became another flashpoint in the NEA funding controversy when his Tongues Untied was broadcast on the PBS series P.O.V. His black queer reel-ness became a lightning rod for malicious conservativeoutrage.

Bill T. Jones brought Still/Here to Northrop Auditorium in 1994. To develop the piece, he held workshops across the country with people facing terminal illnesses. Newsweek called it a work so original and profound that its place among the landmarks of twentieth-century dance seems ensured. Arlene Croce refused to see it but wrote about it in The New Yorker, dismissing it as victimart.

Ron Athey In 1994, I presented Ron Atheys Four Scenes in a Harsh Life. The work opened with a campy burlesque dance by an African-American man, Divinity Fudge, covered in balloons. Ron burst the balloons with a cigar, and then transitioned to a scene in which he raised the tattoos on Divinitys back by cutting stylized marks, patting with paper towels and sending these blood-marked prints along pulleys toward the audience. Operative words to note: blood-marked prints and toward the audience.

In another section, Ron inserted needles into his own arm as his voice-over talked about overcoming addiction and suicide attempts. The iconography of Jesus Passion was then evoked with a crown of thorns pierced into Rons scalp with acupuncture-like needles. The evening culminated with two women being pierced and ecstatically dancing in a queer wedding ceremony officiated by Ron, now clothed in a business suit, exhorting in a booming revivalist voice, There are so many ways to say Hallelujah!

The sold-out performance was well received by an audience of about 100. Post-show discussions with the artist, attended by eighty people, were thoughtful and engaging. Theatre and dance critics had been invitednone chose to attend.

Three weeks after the event, a visual art critic from the Minneapolis StarTribune called, wanting to verify someones distorted, fantastical version of the performance. She did not want to meet in person, and warned me to look for her lead story on the front page the next morning. Here are some choice quotes from that initial article: Knife-wielding performer is known to be HIV-positive and that the audience knocked over the chairs to get out from under the clotheslines.

This was the first of more than twenty articles the newspaper published about a performance its critic had not seen. Vituperative argument about Atheys work escalated into that summers fodder in the NEAs reapropriation battle, since the Walker had received a grant to subsidize the full season of performances, including Atheys.

When Jane Alexander, the head of the NEA at that time, defended the Walker from the erroneously reported and inaccurate coverage, the disgruntled local critic fueled the fires by writing directly to Alexander and to Congress, Your attempts to blame the press for criticism of your agency merely trivializes the issue and obscures the facts. By advocating directly to Congress, she inserted herself into the narrative, and still the newspaper let her continue her coverage.

That local critic also wrote an op-ed piece. Admitting State health officials agreed there was little risk of audience members contracting the AIDS virus from the performance, she fired off that presenting this work was akin to adding blowfish to the buffet of a Japanese restaurant without warning the clientelepotentially poisonous fish whose flesh is said to deliver a peculiar high An eventraises thorny questions. As someone who headed the Walkers public-information office ten years ago, Im glad I dont have to answer them on the institutions behalf.

Walker Director Kathy Halbreich was quoted, I find the negative responses to this troubling, not because of the artistic issues, but because theyre suggestive of the fear we have of people with AIDS. The critics response was, Given the complexity of the issues thats a disturbingly facile response. Somewhere in the background I hear an echo of Clarence Thomas accusing his critics of racism.

Even after this incendiary commentary, the writer continued her reporting for the Minneapolis StarTribune.

Sen. Jesse Helms called Athey a cockroach on the Senate floor. Rep. Bob Dornan termed him a porno jerk and Sen. Clifford Stearns ranted about how Athey endangered the audiences life by the slopping around of AIDS-infected blood.

Minnesotas Sen. Paul Wellstone supported the Walker, as did Congressman Martin Sabo inthe House, and Sen. David Durenberger criticized the highly inflammatory reportingless to do with the Walkeror any single performancethan with the fundamental differences over whether and how the Federal Government should be funding the arts.

Televangelist Pat Robertson tarnished the Walkers good name, and the American Family Associations fundraising exploited Athey for financial gain. But the strangest solicitation came from the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, asking for contributions to defend artists such as Athey. To my amazement, they used the same decontextualized and demonized descriptions of his work the right was usingperpetuating lies and misrepresentations. Good intentions had unintendedconsequences.

National arts service organizations in Washington, DC went into overdrive, trying to save the NEA. However, none called me to discuss what had actually happened. Instead they only talked to themselves within the confines of the beltway, reacting to exploitive and explosive press accounts.

My mother telephoned after watching Rush Limbaugh. Buckets of AIDS-tainted blood were intentionally thrown at the audience, he snidely commented and the audience ran for their lives. When I told my mother Limbaugh was a liar, she responded, But it was on television.

The amount of hate mail and hostile phone messages I received was astounding. Example: We got the abortion doctor, youre next. Blood-red graffiti was painted on the glass doors of the Walker. The police included my house in their regular drive-bys. Any time I left the house, I would hesitate and look out the windows.

Through it all, Walker director Kathy Halbreich was extraordinary. Leaders do not always get to choose their battles. Halbreich was gracious and supportive under intense pressure, as were the Walker board and staff. Local artists, too, rallied around the Walker and me. One, Malka Michelson, created a campaign button: Safe Sex, Not ArtBe a John.

In 1995, Reza Abdoh, the Artaud of our day, died of AIDS. This was the last year grants to individual artists were awarded by the NEA, with the exception of literature fellowships and honorifics in jazz and folk arts. Art, love, and politics collapsedan extraordinary epoch wasover.

For many artists, validation does not come originally from the market place, but had come from the federal government, often leveraging other local and regional support. Ending these fellowships had dire consequences, signaling artists were no longer valued on a national level. Many state agencies followed suit. We have been living with the detrimental impact ever since.

Reflections During the entire summer of the Athey media swirl, not one museum director called Kathy Halbreich to offer support or empathy. Peter Zeisler, then head of Theatre Communications Group, called me irresponsible for presenting Ron Athey, although he had never seen him perform.

Other arts organizations facing controversy experienced the same. Few museums supported each other for controversies surrounding Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Chris Ofili. Directors and boards ran for cover when colleagues came under fire; burying their heads in sand until they, too, were challenged.

Regional theatres didnt support performance artists under fireKaren Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck, and Tim Milleruntil the Manhattan Theatre Clubs Corpus Christi firestorm or the various protests accompanying Angels in America and The Laramie Project sprung up across the country.

The art world got tripped up and confused, supporting only work we liked, but like should be criteria at home for above the couch. Freedom of expression is a more precious commodity than taste. Conservative critics were very clear about their moral imperative as they vilified artists and terrorized institutions. No one won the culture war; we lost it.

Ten years ago, at the World Trade Center site, The Drawing Center and International Freedom Center had to defend themselves against misrepresentative media, when then Governor Pataki demanded both institutions guarantee that neither would do anything to denigrate America or violate the sanctity of the site. The Drawing Center walked away and Pataki eliminated the Freedom Center from Ground Zero plans.

In 2010, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery included David Wojnarowiczs A Fire in My Belly video excerpt in its Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture exhibition featuring painting, drawing, photography, installation, and media images of lesbian and gay identity.

Museum director Martin Sullivan pulled Wojnarowiczs video when assailed by the Catholic League and conservative Republican Representatives John Boehner and Eric Cantor. They deemed it inappropriate for a federal institution, although none had seen the show.

Thankfully, the Association of Art Museum Directors lambasted the removal of his video:

The AAMD believes that freedom of expression is essential to the health and welfare of our communities and our nation. In this case, that takes the form of the rights and opportunities of art museums to present works of art that express different points of view. Discouraging the exchange of ideas undermines the principles of freedom of expression, plurality and tolerance on which our nation was founded. This includes the forcible withdrawal of a work of art from within an exhibitionand the threatening of an institutions funding sources.

Present Day More than two decades later, some of the cultural infidels are being embraced by the museum world. I wonder: Are the body fluids dry enough? Is the blood pure enough after all this time?

In 2013, The NEA Four, Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck, and Tim Miller, were in residence at the New Museum.

In 2014, the Hammer Museum invited Ron Athey to perform in connection with the publication of Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey, a beautifully illustrated catalogue in which Atheys extensive work is analyzed, placing him alongside Jean Genet, Antonin Artaud, and Yukio Mishima, as well as contemporary art-world figures Chris Burden and Bob Flanagan. The Hammer was the first American museum to present Rons performance since the Walker twenty years ago. I was asked to do an overview of the controversy in his career and lead a post-performance dialogue and question and answer session with the artist.

Last year, Walker Art Center included video excerpts of Rons historic performance and clips from the media coverage in a gallery highlighting work from the 1990s as part of the organizations seventy-fifth anniversary celebration. Both Ron and I spoke at a symposium. It was surreal to watch myself defending Athey on a television monitor in the gallery with Ron standing beside me.

And currently, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is showing Robert Mapplethorpes work in an exhibition entitled Focus Perfection, which had already been seen in Los Angeles and will then travel to Sydney.

However, the Culture Wars arent over. Here at Brown University, you are engaged in present day battles around freedom of expression and academic freedom. Your president, Christina Paxson, in an opinion piece last month in The Washington Post wrote,

Suppressing ideas at a university is akin to turning off the power at a factory. As scholars and students, our responsibility is to subject old truths to scrutiny and put forward new ideas to improve them.

At universities, we also advance understanding about issues of justice and fairness, and these discussions can be equally, if not more, difficult. From the earliest days of this country, college campuses have been the sites of fierce debates about slavery, war, womens rights and racial justice. These discussions create rocky moments, and they should. If we dont have these debatesif we limit the flow of ideasthen in fifty years we will be no better than we are today.

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Inside the Culture Wars Maelstrom of the 1990s | HowlRound