Gay Americans, Censorship, And ‘After The Gold Rush’ At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art
THINK PROGRESS
By Alyssa Rosenberg
I spent a day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York over the holiday, and saw two terrific exhibits: the reopened Islamic art wing, about which much more to come, and “After the Gold Rush,” a contemporary photography show. Two pieces in the latter exhibit struck me in particular. First, Philip-Lorca diCorcia took his 1991 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and used it to tweak conservatives who were hysterical over NEA funding for a traveling show of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work. In the second, Robert Gober superimposes a man’s hand between two newspaper articles, clipped neatly and placed on a shell-strewn beach. Below his hand, the article refers to Matthew Shepard’s death. Above it, a letter to the editor argues that “Orthodox Jews, conservative Christians and others have a right to speak out against homosexuality without being placed in the category of thuggery.” [link]
By Alyssa Rosenberg
I spent a day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York over the holiday, and saw two terrific exhibits: the reopened Islamic art wing, about which much more to come, and “After the Gold Rush,” a contemporary photography show. Two pieces in the latter exhibit struck me in particular. First, Philip-Lorca diCorcia took his 1991 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and used it to tweak conservatives who were hysterical over NEA funding for a traveling show of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work. In the second, Robert Gober superimposes a man’s hand between two newspaper articles, clipped neatly and placed on a shell-strewn beach. Below his hand, the article refers to Matthew Shepard’s death. Above it, a letter to the editor argues that “Orthodox Jews, conservative Christians and others have a right to speak out against homosexuality without being placed in the category of thuggery.” [link]
