The blank wall says a lot. Measuring just a few feet, this portion of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth seems conspicuously empty. It’s right when you walk into the upstairs gallery for the current group show Diaries of Home. It’s also right among Sally Mann’s pieces. Maybe it’s paranoia, but I couldn’t help but think, “This is where those photos hung.”
A few weeks ago, a police report was filed, and four Sally Mann pieces were removed. The likely reason is that they depict nude children. We must presume some Karen confused fine art with pornography. (Had this person mistaken Tadao Ando’s lovely building for a bar? Or the internet?)
Then, Tim O’Hare got involved. Our far-right Tarrant County Judge mentioned something about an investigation or something? I wouldn’t know because this was apparently reported in some far-right Dallas blog that’s not worth a single touch of my infinitely clicking fingers. Tim O’Hare is lots of things: right-wing blowhard, Jesus freak, bewildered and cranky old man. What he is not is someone who knows how to operate Google. Otherwise, he would have known that Sally Mann is an icon and that those four photos have been exhibited and viewed across the globe for decades. Thanks to Captain Clueless Tim O’Hare, the world is laughing at us. There’s the City of Big Shoulders, then there’s us: the City of Small Minds.
Photo by Anthony Mariani
The Modern hasn’t said anything except to the Texas art blog Glasstire: “An inquiry has been made concerning four artworks in the temporary exhibition Diaries of Home. These have been widely published and exhibited for more than 30 years in leading cultural institutions across the country and around the world.”
The police are also mum.
The big wigs love to claim Fort Worth is a world-class city. With anti-art, pro-censorship moves, it most certainly is not. With Diaries of Home, it most certainly is. Reconciling the two dichotomous things should be second nature to anyone who’s lived in Texas for any substantial amount of time. We profess our undying love and devotion to freedom but tell women what they can and can’t do with their bodies. We preach tolerance when we can’t stand the thought of sharing a bathroom or locker room or even a supermarket with someone who doesn’t prescribe to gender norms. We talk of lifting up the poor but do everything we can to make their lives harder and crueler. Two-facedness comes with the territory, and in Fort Worth, it’s still the same ol’ shit. Tim O’Hare and every other conservative pol won’t stop until that international cachet we all strive for remains permanently out of reach. They may be able to fool the yokels into thinking that good barbecue and fancy hotels are all that’s needed to be a global hot spot, but the higher thinkers among us know better.
This brouhaha takes away from a stellar collection of artful photography. A sprawling exhibit, the show co-curated by Chief Curator Andrea Karnes and Assistant Curator Clare Milliken features work by women and nonbinary artists which tackles the myriad permutations of “family,” “community,” and “home.” Mann’s contributions are some of the most artful in that they transcend documentary photography to achieve a sort of conceptual grandeur — many are indeed framed like moody paintings. A boy reels with a bloody nose, a woman in a parked car extends her naked legs for a lost pink shoe, two young girls strike sassy parental poses — by magnifying the everyday, the mundane, Mann imbues it with celestial magic, the kind that eludes us as we race around like rats in our daily mazes of offices, schools, and living spaces. Just stop. And breathe. And don’t think. There’s magic there if you learn how to see it.
Photo by Anthony Mariani
Is art whatever an artist points her finger (or camera) at? No. And it never has been. Like most creative industries, art is about two things: your investment in the craft and who you know. Talent is a distant third. As 99% of my friends who are artists (and musicians and writers and actors) can attest, talent means nothing unless you spend the time producing your art while engaging the public and putting yourself in the right positions to meet the right people — even if that means packing up and moving to New York or L.A., and who in their un-inebriated mind wants to do that knowing there’s no middle class in either place, just the super-rich and the super-poor. You’d have to be temporarily or permanently insane to take that leap — or maybe you’d be just the kind of person who would make just the kind of art that institutions should be taking risks on. And pissing off the far-right Nanny State in the process.
What I also know more than my love of my family and of terrible, frustrating sports teams is that art is certainly not what an elected official points their finger at. The argument that public spaces funded partially by public monies are beholden to public officials is stupid. Art institutions important enough to require support from taxpayers became that important through supporting novel ideas, and not all new, groundbreaking thoughts or products are PG or appealing to Mr. Teddy Whitedick, Esq. Some of the best aren’t.
This Modern ordeal isn’t the first time the nannies have scolded a local museum for not meeting their standards of primness. It’s more worrisome now than ever because of the fascist new administration. When elected officials are determining what’s art and what isn’t, even or especially at our world-renowned institutions, we are going backward. It starts with art, controlling it, confiscating it, burning it. It ends with people, controlling them, jailing them, and would it be the height of drama to say “burning them,” too? Not when the new president’s bankroller is a fucking Nazi.
All our major newspapers, those erstwhile beacons of truth, justice, and equality, have already bent the knee to the orange stain. Major institutions and other cultural power players can’t be far behind, leaving progressive artists with nowhere to show (or sell) their work, which will heavily neuter their livelihoods. A world of only Rothkos and Twomblys and Newmans and other toothless, edgeless, super-white-bread Baby Boomer bullshit is not one I want to live in. Guess we’d better buckle up. Or move. Anyone in Basel or Valencia hiring? Asking for half a city.
