Frederick Waugh’s “Southwesterly Gale, St. Ives,” 1907, Smithsonian
American Art Museum
Everyone knows that Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough on Tuesday broke his personal embargo on “Hide/Seek” media interviews by speaking to the Washington Post and the NY Times. What you probably didn’t know (until now) is that he also spoke to me.
My Huffington Post account of our wide-ranging, 40-minute conversation in his Washington office—‘Hide/Seek’ Interview: Smithsonian Secretary Clough ‘Can Do the Math’ (But Miscalculates)—goes deeper than the two mainstream-media pieces in examining Clough’s thought processes and the logical disconnects that mar his analysis of what’s happened in the “Hide/Seek” dust-up and how best to move forward when that dust settles.
I know what you’re thinking: The Smithsonian looked kindly on my interview request because I’m one of the few (if not the only) commentators who supported Clough’s decision to remove David Wojnarovicz‘s “A Fire in My Belly” from the National Portrait Gallery’s landmark show. You be the judge as to whether the result of this favor was a puff piece, a hatchet job, or something in between.
If nothing else, you’ll enjoy perusing an exemplary manifestation of bureaucrat-ese that is intended to govern the Smithonian’s approach to sensitive exhibitions—an internal 2003 document known as Smithsonian Directive 603, which Clough says will be followed in vetting future exhibitions. Particularly note the very troubling phrase that I have highlighted in my Huffington Post excerpt from that document.
It was clear from our conversation that this very cordial former president of the Georgia Institute of Technology (who used his engineering background to analyze the “Hide/Seek” controversy) is a science guy, not an arts guy. Displays of artworks, in his lexicon, are “exhibits,” not “exhibitions.” The Association of Art Museum Directors becomes “the American Association of Museum Directors.” (Well, we’ve all made that mistake at least once.) When I asked him, at the end of the interview, for the name of the artist whose painting he was standing in front of when I snapped his photo, he hadn’t a clue.
But let’s depart from the administrative offices and head over to the National Portrait Gallery, where anyone who wants to can view the withdrawn Wojnarovicz video, playing continuously in a protest shed parked conveniently in front of the museum (thanks to the City of Washington, which issued a permit, on the grounds of “free speech”):
Oh yes, and I also viewed the rest of the “Hide/Seek” show. There’s a CultureGrrl Video for that, COMING SOON.