"Censored", August 1996

For Immediate Release,

15 August, 1996:

This is a press release that should never have been written. After all, we are Tolerant, Progressive Folks, living in a Tolerant Progressive Little Part of the World, right?

The Main Street Museum Of Art is therefore ashamed to announce a Call For Entries for a show of art entirely focused on Censorship, artworks that have been censored in any manner, and Artworks That Concern Censorship In Any Way.

Entries will be accepted in all media. Local Booksellers will have displays of Banned Books. Handsome framed portraits of Anthony Comstock and Will Hayes will be shown. A call or letter to our Museum is all thats necessary to secure a place in the exhibition. Installation will be the last week of November, 1996 with an opening reception Saturday, 30 November featuring a special observation of the “Day Without Art” on 1 December. As a dignified and appropriate gesture, all artwork will be draped and covered with Palls of Black Velvet for 24 hours, a token of our sincere desire to have no more Lives, no more Art, “Blacked Out.”

Getting back to our premise; if we’re so progressive, why do we feel compelled to mount a Censorship Art Show?

Here is some background, all these events took place within the last year: A local artist, exhibiting her paintings in a local coffee shop displayed a painting (we found quite charming,) dealing with a Mother’s giving her infant Teat (as, bless God, they are wont to do). More than three patrons complained that the picture was “indecent” and it was removed from the walls of the establishment.

A Tunbridge Vermont photographer exhibited his work in our state capital. One of his pictures, featuring a man smoking a Cigarette was ordered not to be hung for fears of sending a negative message to our children (the “Holy Innocents”).

Sculpture has been removed from galleries in Hanover. Nudes have been refused in spaces across the region. “Speech Codes,” currently being enacted in many of our most August Institutions of Learning restrict speech in-and-of-itself, making certain Words punishable with disciplinary action. Locally, the White River Community was startled by newspaper headlines and pictures over an ArtPublicProject Storefront Nude and some budding Art Critics who painted a bikini over her buxom “So-To-Speaks.” And our President and Congress, all under the mantle of the protection of our children’s Pure Little Minds, recently signed into law a “Communications Decency Act,” so flawed the head of the United States Department of Justice publicly stated that she could not enforce it even if it were to survive the firm reversals dealt it from Federal Appeals Court judges who found it a Blatantly Unconstitutional.

In short, we as a people seem to care all too much about what other people are watching, listening to, saying and even (horrors) Thinking. Are we entering some other Dark Ages, where bureaucrats will exercise control over what we read and say? Or is all this just Backlash from the flowers of technology that have blossomed at a phenomenal rate and given us, in the last 20 years: the widespread use of the xerox, tv, floppy disks, tape of all kind, cell-phones, and the Internet? No single group has a monopoly on Attempted Censoring, both Left and Right have been guilty of this Nefarious Meddling. Our Little Show hopes to reflect a healthy non-partisan outlook, establishing Dialog about a subject that, in our opinion, could use a little Intelligent Discourse.

You decide. Artists, Booksellers, Press People of all types, Educators, Writers, and All Other Concerned Citizens are needed and welcomed. We encourage All Opinions on this serious and sometimes not-so-serious matter. We will exhibit, on our Walls letters and articles both Pro and Con Censorship; and by so doing, hope to Define The Issue a bit better. So send us your artwork, books, cartoons, what-have-you, or come on down to Tunnel Town, Junction City, the hip-est spot in Vermont and let’s start talking. Lets talk about what is appropriate and what isn’t; what you like and don’t like. And, who knows, maybe you’ll go away thinking that Our Little Museum Itself should be Censored! We certainly hope not. We love you.