Guggenheim Director Cites Threats as Reason for Pulling Animal Artworks

[Coventina]

The Guggenheim Museum’s new exhibit “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” will open tomorrow after a prolonged, intense firestorm that led to the removal of three of its original works. At a media preview on Thursday, Richard Armstrong, the museum’s director, addressed the controversy, saying that the museum received threats that forced them to contact the police.

-snip-

“It was not only the quantity of people’s reactions, but there were a number of them that bordered on ominously threatening, or beyond that. We were obliged to consult with the police,” Mr. Armstrong said in an interview at the Guggenheim. “There wasn’t possibility for further debate.”

“Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other” has faced pushback since its original performance in 2003 in Beijing, and Mr. Armstrong said he had expected criticism at the onset of the project. But he said he was forced to change course because of the threats leveled at his employees. “I think one thing we weren’t prepared for, or were surprised by, was the ferocity of the reaction,” Mr. Armstrong said. “The issue ultimately became one of safety.”

In turn, the museum faced criticism from artists and free speech activists for pulling the artworks. Mr. Armstrong said the museum will asses the controversy in programming going forward. “We do hope we’re going to make a series of programs in the course of the exhibition that bring together different points of view about what could, should and might have happened,” he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/arts/design/guggenheim-art-and-china-after-1989-animal-welfare.html?emc=edit_tnt_20171006&nlid=73531149&tntemail0=y

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Death threats are criminal, and should be prosecuted as such.
Having said that, this was a massive fail on Guggenheim's part. They are not an accredited zoo, and have no business keeping animals on display as "art." And I say this as an Art Historian.

The video of dogs is a glorification of dog fighting, and has no business being presented as "art" either. Legitimate artists who want to explore ideas of cruelty do not inflict that cruelty on other creatures. That is just Ethics 101.

The Guggenheim director needs to lose his job over this.

[Me.]

1. K&R To Keep The Subject Viable

[Not Ruth]

2. Does not bother me and I love animals and art

[Coventina]

3. Well, apparently you don't love animals enough to want what's best for them.

And you don't love art enough to understand how this gives one of the most important institutions in modern and contemporary art a black eye.

But OK, go ahead "loving" animals and art.

[frazzled]

4. I think you're a little confused

The black eye to the Guggenheim involves their willingness to censor art, not their decision to have included artworks that depict dogs on a treadmill as a metaphor for the oppression of human beings in China, or a glass and metal sculpture in which reptiles and insects were housed.

The issue falls between: if serious threats to the museum existed that police and security authorities thought were real enough to take seriously, then perhaps they were right to censor in this case: human life, in the event of a bombing or some such action, takes precedence over any other issue.

Violence in the name of love for animals is never acceptable. And in general, censorship is never acceptable (unless violence that threatens is at stake).

[Coventina]

7. I'm not confused at all. Cruelty is not OK by dressing up as "artistic freedom."

You can't glorify dog fighting and call it "art."

You can't cage animals and call it "art."

The art world has ethics, just as every other area of life has ethics.

Threats of violence are not acceptable either, I already said that. If the source of those threats can be traced, those individuals should be prosecuted for committing those crimes.

[frazzled]

9. But violence against humans is okay

(First of all, the dogs weren't fighting, because they literally couldn't touch each other; and no harm could come to these animals by the showing of the video, because they video was made years ago--it's over. But this is all beside the point.)

People are weird. I saw a screening of a Canadian film back in the '90s that was filled with scene after scene of horrendous violence perpetrated against humans. The audience was quiet. At the very end of the film an elephant is shot (not for real, of course, but in the movie way): there were shouts and gasps of outrage from the audience, where there had been none throughout the previous 90 minutes.

We watch football players and boxers beating each others' brains out every day. We watch films and TV shows in which people are shot and blown up for great yuks (and yes, some stunt performers must risk their physical beings and perhaps even lives to depict some of this stuff). We invite exterminators into our homes to kill insects by the thousands, and expend taxpayer funds to rid our cities of rats, with little moral compunction. But if two dogs are put on a treadmill in a video to gnarl at each other and eventually tire themselves out, our outrage is boundless.

Let's not be hypocritical. Let's have some ethics in real life. Art is art. Real life is horrendous, as we see with the millions killed or displaced in Syria, with the Rohingya in Myanmar, with the cruel response to the life-threatening plight of Puerto Ricans, and with the death or maiming of more than 500 human beings in Las Vegas. We've got real problems of near-apocalyptic proportions at the moment--a video and a sculpture are not very high on the list of moral outrages.

[Coventina]

10. Whataboutism is not an excuse. I never said violence against humans is OK.

I don't approve of that either.

And, it is possible to condemn more than one thing at a time.

[get the red out]

5. Good!

Fuck that wretched son of a bitch!!!!!

No one who would have had to approve this vile display should keep their jobs. Maybe the museum has learned to try not to promote the lowest levels of human debauchery if only so they can avoid threats. But my guess is that those “threats” were really just public outcry.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

6. Fuck this as anyone's idea of art.

And spare me the whaddabouts.

[Coventina]

8. Thank you.

[geardaddy]

11. That is fucking vile!