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If museums had aggressively taken on the notion of art education in the schools -- to the point where it became a common understanding that art is designed to make you think -- we could have already seen an awful lot of people coming out of school who see the stuff differently.

An attempt should have been taken to educate journalists -- who have a chance to pontificate, punditize -- and there should have been massive re-education of our legislators about what art is, what it does. It's not to say we would definitely succeed, but I know for a fact that no attempt has been made. Let's say the NEA wanted to tackle this problem -- had brought together the heads of major foundations like the Rockefeller, Ford and the Pew -- and said, let's fund some really in-depth seminars somewhere irresistible, like at the Aspen Art Museum -- a lot of things could have changed.

If I had been elected chair of the Endowment, I would've called up people in Hollywood who've made a serious commitment to contemporary art -- Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Madonna, David Geffen, Barbra Streisand -- and said, Let's do something with insight, respect, humor, and get legislators and/or the general public to see where the likes of [performance artist] Karen Finley came from. Let's look at where "Piss Christ" came from, not only in terms of [artist Andres] Serrano, but in the history of the depiction of Christ.

That kind of thing would have been immensely popular on TV, too. There could have been more effort to produce programs about art, and there's nothing. I bet there's not one single program -- besides Sister Wendy -- devoted to contemporary art. In the '80s there were some, but it's just gone by. There are plenty of places where real change can happen, but no one, since '89, has educated people to start thinking differently about art. That's first.

Most people seem to think that Mayor Giuliani's just making a calculated political move with his battle against the Brooklyn Art Museum, that it has nothing to do with what he thinks of the art.

I think Giuliani would have backed down if it had been a ploy to lure voters; he learned immediately that New Yorkers are horrified by his actions. There is a kind of knee-jerk aspect to this. Giuliani, in a lot of ways, represents where most people are with contemporary art -- he knows enough about art to know it's supposed to be comfortable, tradition-based and beautiful, and acts as if the artists we love today have never had a history of controversy. There's a particular kind of American male who takes the know-nothing stance and defends it to the barricades, never thinking about the fact that this has happened before and will happen again. It's willful ignorance.

The point the art world hasn't gotten across is that even great art of the past is meant to be looked at and thought about -- not just glossed over. Art has spent too long living in the ivory tower, and there has been no serious attempt to educate people about how it functions, or about the history of aesthetic challenges that date back to the Renaissance.

What's been missing from the media's discussion of the current controversy?

There has been more of a clamoring from voices in the art world, but most enjoin freedom of expression, rather than defending the artist's right -- not just to free speech -- but to the thoughtful reinterpretation of whatever subjects they choose.

[New York Times art critic] Michael Kimmelman has been rather patronizing; he, like a lot of the media, makes it out as if artists are overgrown adolescents whose only intention is to shock. Really, almost none of them are in it for the shock value; the art that they make is full of information -- about both the real world and ... all the art that came before.

Americans -- even those who should know better -- disparage contemporary art and artists almost categorically. We're so used to the 6 o'clock news, to predigested information, that we balk whenever anything actually asks something of us.

Even just hearing about Chris Ofili's work -- I've never actually seen his stuff -- offers up some really thought-provoking stuff. What is it about representing the Virgin as African that's so compelling? What about the notion of her sexuality, which has not been left out of the equation? How does this version of sacred/profane play into the classic Madonna/whore dichotomy? How does his take on the Madonna/whore thing refer back to literature, or to feminism? Each one of these questions could keep me busy for a while. What is it that we haven't communicated to people, that the fun we [could] have grappling with these issues never occurs?
salon.com | Oct. 25, 1999

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