Breaking! The Aesthetics of Terror at The Chelsea Art Museum Cancelled- Via Art Fag City: "The Aesthetics of Terror, an exhibition scheduled for launch this November at the Chelsea Art Museum has been canceled by museum president Dorothea Keeser. Artists were informed yesterday morning that Keeser felt the show 'glorified terrorism and showed disrespect for its victims.' "
Financial Crimes- Full text from a speech given by Brian Holmes at the Convergence Center exhibition earlier this week: "...it is urgent for cultural producers to communicate the stakes of contemporary transformations, without remaining in the ghetto of specialized languages and vanguard techniques. We need a broader understanding of what art can be, certainly not a return to the old splits between avant-garde rupture and documentary realism. Art has a key role to play in the economy, in communications and in the spectacles of power. Much of the world today exists in the imagination, in the semiotic realms that I was describing before. And they have a huge effect on concrete reality."
simone niquille- Extract from a work-in-progress by artist Simone Niquille, via i heart photograph. "the images are derived from google search results for politicians and data from their speeches."
Breaking! The Aesthetics of Terror at The Chelsea Art Museum Cancelled
—————————————-
What an outrage!!! I am very curious to know how the cancellation came about. Given the fact that the Chelsea Art Museum is not a gigantic institution, I assume the director knew very well the details of the project, which I hear was about two years in the making. So, what made her decide to cancel it now? I wonder who was funding the exhibit and what pressure did they exert onto the director? As a curator and someone who thinks about issues relating to visual culture and the aestheticization of violence, I was looking forward to this exhibit and the accompanying catalog. Just as the ICP exhibition of the photographs depicting torture at Abu Ghraib sparked an intellectual conversation on the nature of the imagery, so too would have this exhibit at the Chelsea Art Museum. I hope people raise hell over this issue…. what should we do?
Paddy Johnson followed up the report with a response from Chelsea Art Museum director Dorothea Keeser. According to Keeser and curator Manon Slome, Slome resigned and canceled the exhibition after disagreements over the direction of the show.
Click here for statements from Dorothea Keeser on Art Fag City: http://www.artfagcity.com/2008/09/26/chelsea-art-museum-president-dorothea-keeser-and-curator-manom-slome-respond/
Paddy also made a pdf of the exhibition's catalog available: http://www.artfagcity.com/2008/09/28/the-chelsea-art-museums-dialectics-of-terror-catalog-raises-more-questions/