Christ On The Cross!

Katie Omberg's handwritten letter of complaint to National Portrait Gallery director Martin E. Sullivan is completely on-target and logical. It's disgraceful all the capitulation going down in DC these days, whether it be on taxes, the military or even just the inclusion of a seminal work of art in a place where it belongs, disgraceful and damn disappointing.

Comments

[casey]

So simple and touching.

And nothing will be done about it by the gallery.

[.V]

I made a piece of art to commemorate World AIDs Day. It is a picture of a bunch of corpses of guys who died of AIDS, being shat upon by a bunch of people with huge round yellow smiley faces. It is called AIDS HA HA!! I want it displayed at the Gallery cuz I think it is art and too bad if you are offended.

[Matthew Rettenmund]

.V: Your comparison is ridiculous. It would make more sense if you found a parallel icon that a gay person holds dear, which is hard to do since being gay isn't a religion, but let's say it's an image of the rainbow flag with ants all over it. Like with this artist's work, it depends on what the context and message is. If the message that people overwhelmingly take from it is "fuck you, gays," then yeah, that is offensive. But the message of this artist's work is not "fuck you, Christians," even if it contains criticism of Christianity in the context of how the AIDS epidemic was viewed.

Have you ever looked at this artist's work? There should be nothing offensive about it, even to someone who is religious.

And that is a lot of wasted words on someone who's working with the intellect of a two-year-old. But there ya go.

[.V]

"the message that people overwhelmingly take "

Thank you for making my point.

[Matthew Rettenmund]

.V: I didn't make your point; but if you feel I did, (pat pat). The overwhelming vibe from the artist's piece is not that it's a hate piece vs. Christians. Also, it's been around and powerfully moving people for a couple of decades. But if your shit-on-PWAs piece that we're looking forward to seeing winds up having a comparable impact, I'm sure it will also warrant inclusion.