Sunday, May 27, 2001
Los Angeles Times
Santa Fe Museum Offers Compromise
Tey Marianna Nunn hesitated--briefly--before including a
semi-nude image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in an exhibition of some 30 digital
works by four Latina artists at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa
Fe, N.M.
What gave her pause, she says, were the bare breasts of the female angel holding up the modern Madonna clad in a floral bikini.
In the end, the museum's curator of contemporary Hispano
and Latino collections decided the breasts were maternal, not sexual. So she
allowed Alma Lopez's "Our Lady" to take her place in "Cyber-Arte:
Tradition Meets Technology."
It turned out to be the most controversial artistic choice ever made by Nunn,
or anybody else at the museum.
Nobody anticipated the slow-boiling outcry for the work's removal or the "offerings"
it attracted--a dead fish, car tires, a toilet bowl sprouting a tree branch
with sanitary napkins hanging from it. "Sometimes it's an explosive situation
here," says Barbara Hagood, the museum's public relations director. "We
have never been up against anything like this before."
On Tuesday, museum administrators bowed to community pressure by announcing
the run of "Cyber-Arte" would be cut short by four months, ending
in late October rather than February. "It's just a gesture of goodwill,"
said Thomas H. Wilson, director of the Museum of New Mexico, which oversees
the state's network of public museums and monuments.
The announcement coincided with the release of an exhaustive review of the
controversy by the museum's Sensitive Materials Committee, composed of curators
and other museum employees. Poring over protesters' statements and museum
procedures, the nine-member committee last week recommended "Our Lady"
should stay up, asserting the museum's "responsibility to represent folk
art in the context of cultural change in communities throughout the world."
The museum on Tuesday also turned over hundreds of pages of the committee's
deliberations to community members who had filed a Freedom of Information
request for the documents, hoping to uncover alleged bias by museum staff.
"The museum is very proud of its deliberations, and they gave them every
single [allowable] page," said Wilson, a committee member. "We feel
that we have nothing to hide."
The developments are not likely to appease die-hard protesters, who immediately
reaffirmed their intention of getting the piece removed. For her part, Lopez
said Tuesday that she could live with the early-close compromise even though
it could be considered a victory for her critics. "I hope they let this
go so it will be over soon for all of us," she said. "I'm kind of
tired of this whole thing."
But the beat goes on.
The public can now appeal the committee's ruling to Wilson, who has 30 days
to respond. (The deadline for appeals is not clearly defined, Wilson said,
but the museum will be liberal in accepting them.) Ultimately, the final say
rests with the appointed board of regents, the museum's seven-member governing
board.
The controversy started brewing slowly after the exhibition opened Feb. 25,
with a panel discussion attended by Lopez. Nobody complained about her piece
at the time. In March, protesters held a rally and vigil, emboldened by Santa
Fe Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan's public demand for a museum apology. After
an overflow crowd forced cancellation of a public hearing April 4, some 750
people, mostly critics, packed a larger convention hall for an all-day forum
April 16.
On the bright side, Nunn says, the controversy has sparked healthy debate
on deeper issues sensitive to New Mexicans--like the struggle to protect age-old
local traditions against outsiders.
Does Nunn have any regrets about her decision to show the work? "I am
first and foremost an artist advocate," she says. "But would I ever
want to go through this again? Never, never, ever, ever."