There is a scene in the movie Patton that shows Patton about to make a political play to become the Commander-in-Chief of the invasion of Normandy. In it he is addressing his aide-de-camp and says this little line.
“The event will be social, and by social I mean political.”
I think this is one of the truest statements I’ve read in a long time. It brings me to what I want to discuss as it pertains to the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s video “A Fire in My Belly”.
There has been much gnashing of teeth and open talk that Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough should resign for his heavy handed and weak attempts to pacify a conservative political base. He should. However let me put a quick frame around what he did do, and how in a way he did take the pressure off both the museum and the curators involved.
A Quick Back Story:
In the late eighties the Corcoran Gallery of Art at the last minute cancelled the traveling retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work. The fallout from that has hung over the Corcoran for years and blemished the reputations of the director and curators of that show for a long time.
Back To The Present:
Over the past couple of years the Smithsonian has been under severe financial scrutiny as well as just plain underfunding and mismanagement. (See these articles 1, 2, 3 – there are more, these are just from a quick search) So the Smithsonian has a few issues when it comes to money right now.
The Smithsonian right now is in no position to do two things:
1. piss of the government
2. make morale any lower at the museums on a day to day basis than it already is.
By putting the blame on himself Clough has managed to avoid doing too much of either. More importantly, he has been able to keep the reputations of the two curators and the American Art Museum mostly intact. No mean feat considering the dumb ass move he pulled in removing the artwork. I will give him credit for being a leader of the organization and not pushing the blame on others. In Washington that is in rare supply.
He should still resign though.
Afternote: I’ve held off writing this for some time because I think the outcry and voices of protest are important and critical responses to this action. In no way did I want to quiet them nor did I want to look like a Clough apologist.