need info on museums dealing with censorship-positive outcom

[John Meredith]

The Anchorage Art Museum in Alaska had a show of censored
art a few years ago. I don't know what stats they might
have, but it generated a lot of local publicity.

John Meredith

[Jim Rubinstein]

re: censorship, I would look for a book called _The Play of the
Unmentionable: an installation by Joseph Kosuth at the Brooklyn
Museum_.(1992) This was an outstanding exhibition created by Kosuth and
the Brooklyn Museum in 1990. This exhibit straddled the line between
being a "curated" exhibition and a large installation/artwork that
mimics/comments on museum exhibitions. (as in Fred Wilson's _Mining the
Museum_), but this one looks at the history of censorship in Western art,
back to the middle ages, through the early 20th Century, Nazi Germany
and todays controversies. The exhibition treated quotes from artists and
critics, as artworks in themselves, hung next to examples of censored
works.

Jim Rubinstein

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Jim Rubinstein // tesm...@sivm.si.edu // SITES
202-786-2258 // tesm...@sivm.bitnet // Washington, DC

[Diane Brenner]

John Meredith must be thinking or an exhibition that included an American
Flag on the floor that was at the Visual Arts Center of Alaska several
years ago. The local American Legion got pretty involved with
demonstrations out front. The Anchorage Museum was not involved with
this exhibition (except that we were all paying attention.) The VACA
closed their doors soon after this exhibit - sometime in 1992 or 3. We
have just inherited VACA files (about 70 boxes) that are in total
disarray. I remember seeing a couple of boxes containing catalogs and
clippings about this exhibition, but we have just containerized the whole
collection because our storage area is being renovated. I don't expect
that we will be able to offer any reference material from that collection
for at least the next year.
I would expect that some VAC people would say that this exhibit was
the beginning of the end, as the issue clouded funding from various local
sources - or there was the perception that it did. If you are desperate
to know more, I could probably find someone who was involved during the
time for you to talk to.
Diane Brenner
Museum Archivist, Anchorage Museum of History and Art