No, Hitler is the right metaphor

From Larry Reid, director of Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Art during the Culture Wars, former curator at the Experience Music Project and currently running  Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery, an emailed response to this post about commentary on Christina Orr-Cahall, the next director of EMP:

You were wrong in your assessment of Jen Graves’ column about the new EMP director. Actually, Jen understated the case against this awful woman, and your excuses for her behavior are lame at best. In my opinion (Orr-Cahall) is the personification of evil …

 You might recall that I was briefly caught up in this hysteria at COCA in 1989 with my Modern Primitives exhibition (tattoo and body modification.) I was able to prove to the NEA that Pat Robertson, Jesse Helms, et. al. were misinformed about the content of the show, which they based on viewing the book of the same title. I used discretion in selecting images for display, and no NEA funding was applied to the catalog.

So I escaped relatively unscathed. At the request of the NEA, I didn’t make a big issue of it in order to avoid further inflaming the passions of the wing nuts.
Years later, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for all correspondence related to Modern Primitives between the NEA, Helms, and others. Though heavily redacted, this file revealed an insane atmosphere and total capitulation on the part of NEA chair John Frohnmayer to the forces of evil.

He and Helms were identical to Hitler and Himmler. They even used the same vocabulary. I swear to gawd Helms referred to “degenerate art.” Without a hint of irony.
Leave it to EMP. I guess Heinrich Himmler was unavailable.

Graves answers my critique & updates her story here and here.

Reid added in a phone conversation that CoCA was audited by the IRA IRS the year following Modern Primitives and that:

We’re still dealing with the fallout from that time. Many misplaced their courage and haven’t found it yet. A decade later, when the (Seattle Art Museum) caved to pressure and canceled Mike Kelley, you and I were the only ones who objected. Where was the outrage?

Sample of objection here. Reid, quoted in my story, said,

Who needs Jesse Helms when we have the Seattle Art Museum? Did the museum make any effort to educate the public about this work? No. If the museum doesn’t have the guts to stand behind a strong work of art when the squeeze is on, then it should go on pretending the 20th century never happened. Seattle’s not ready for Mike Kelley? What are we, the wimp town of all time?

True, but I still think no one should play the Hitler card until there is murder on a massive scale. A rotten attitude toward art isn’t enough. And even on the subject of art, Helms wanted to deny public funding for art he found offensive, not to destroy it and hound its makers out of the country or into death camps. To make these comparisons is disrespectful to those who dealt with the real Nazis. Reid as an arts center director tap dancing to keep his funding is not in the same realm.

To call Christina Orr-Cahall the personification of evil makes a cartoon of the category, but I realize that that Reid works in a comic book store.