9:15am | The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), one of the nation’s largest and most prominent advocate for free speech, contacted Councilmember Rae Gabelich in regards to claims that she censored veterans’ art work while holding a fundraiser in the gallery/public space. Many, some of our readers included, have stated that the accusations against Gabelich are ill-grounded and puerile, while the opposite side claims Gabelich engaged in an explicit form of censorship and disrespect.
The letter is as follows:
Long Beach City Council – District 8
District Office
3837 Atlantic Avenue
Long Beach, CA 90807
Phone: (562) 570-1326
Fax: (562) 570-1327
[email protected]By e-mail and fax
December 16th, 2011
Re: Removal of Veteran Photographs
Dear Ms. Gabelich:
As a group uniting of over 50 organizations dedicated to promoting the First Amendment right to free speech, the National Coalition Against Censorship is deeply concerned about the removal and covering of several works from the Conflict Zone and The Art of Debriefing exhibition, organized by America’s Veterans Inc., The Independence Fund, and The National Veterans Art Museum, and held at the Expo Arts Center in Long Beach. Your decision, as a government employee, to remove and cover documentary war artwork by American veterans because of its content, in a public space and at a public fundraiser that overlapped with the Arts Center’s regular gallery opening hours, raises serious First Amendment concerns.
It is our understanding that representatives from your office directed Doug Orr, the person responsible for booking work in the main gallery space, to remove several of the artworks for the duration of the public fundraiser at the Expo Arts Center on November 5, as they were considered too graphic for a fundraising crowd. After much debate Mr. Orr reluctantly moved aside two portable walls, one with several graphic photographs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, removed several photographs and covered a painting. The veterans themselves then had to re-hang the artwork as your representatives failed to return the pieces to their rightful places after the fundraiser ended.
It is not the role of a public official to shield the eyes of the public from work because she subjectively decides it is too graphic. As a public space opened for the purpose of exhibiting art, the Expo Art Center is governed by the free speech clause in the First Amendment, and that imperative is not suspended when a public event is held at the space.
In removing and covering the work you are not only violating the free speech rights of the artists and interfering with the integrity of the curatorial process, but you are also showing disrespect towards the experiences of Americans who risk their lives to defend their country’s interests.
The experiences of American troops abroad may indeed be hard to look at, but they are the real experiences of real people doing their jobs, jobs that we, as voters and taxpayers, have sent them there to do. Shielding the eyes of the public from the reality of wars in which the country is engaged suppresses the reality of these wars and misleads the public as to their human cost.
I hope you take our concerns into consideration when organizing future events, we also urge you to contact the exhibition organizers and apologize for the covering of the work and what appeared to them as a clear demonstration of disrespect.
Sincerely,
Svetlana Mintcheva
Director of ProgramsCC:
Peggy Fontenot
Artist
Email: ————————-
Phone: ————————America’s Veterans
The Independence Fund
The National Veterans Art Museum
All participating artists in the Conflict Zone and The Art of Debriefing exhibition
Artists of The Art of Debriefing exhibit, left to right, Jack Kykisz, James K. Johnson, Peggy Fontenot, and Michael Burr. Photo courtesy of Manny Sanchez.
December 1, 8:30am | Censorship is always a tricky issue, one that — particularly within the Western political paradigm — is always met with fraught concern and sometimes outrage. Whether it is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, or the recent censorship of David Wojnarowicz’s “Fire in My Belly” by the National Portrait Gallery, censorship brings about First Amendment issues to the forefront because we are dealing with that ever-slippery slope known as “artistic merit.” When U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan II stated in the 1971 case of Cohen v. California, “One man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric,” he quite succinctly displayed the lack of objectivity with which one can approach a concept like artistic merit.
When the Gallery Expo decided to exhibit photographers’ views on war in a dual exhibition, the participants of The Art of Debriefing and Conflict Zone nor Councilmember Rae Gabelich expected what would turn out to become a debacle and argument over the idea of censorship.
With a November 4 opening, Michael Burr and Peggy Fontenot, amongst other artists, began the finishing touches on their Debriefing exhibit on November 3. They claimed to have overheard representatives of Gabelich’s office discussing which pieces they were going to remove for the Councilmember’s fundraiser on November 5 at the gallery. As Fontenot explains to the Long Beach Post, “[E]ven though we — the photographers — were present, we were never officially notified or asked to be a part of the conversation; we overheard the representatives speaking with the curator and the Business Improvement Association since they were only a few feet away from us. And although the conversation was heated, it was apparent that the censorship would take place.”
It became a scheduling conflict that turned sour: Gabelich had originally planned on having her party/fundraiser on November 13 but due to scheduling conflicts, was forced to pick November 5, the day surrounding the exhibit’s opening and more directly conflicting with the artists.
Gabelich had no specific intention of altering anything except what was needed to make her fundraiser work efficiently. The space itself is publicly owned, the City leasing the building to the Bixby Knolls BIA, which then sublets the spaces to individuals. The space is intended to be malleable for multiple functions; it even has its walls on wheels to accommodate different events. It is not entirely just a gallery space. Given that Gabelich was having a band and dancefloor on hand, the space had to be altered unfortunately after the artists had already set up the exhibit. With the particular rawness of four photos that the office of Gabelich felt were too graphic for a fundraising crowd, the pieces were respectfully taken down.
Following the end of the fundraiser, the exhibit was, according to both Gabelich’s office and Blair Cohn of the Bixby BIA, returned to exactly the way it was when the gallery was open for regular business hours.
Burr, a Viet Nam veteran, told the Long Beach Post a different story. “No one, much less an elected official, has the right to tell you what you can’t see, read, listen to, or participate in lawfully. And around Veterans Day, it was a particularly egregious act. Following November 11, we went back in to discover indeed that images and certain signage had been taken down. So we decided to put signs with big block letters above the ‘offensive’ pictures saying, ‘This is what a councilmember didn’t want you to see.'”
This isn’t the first time Gabelich has been accused of censorship. Back in January, Doug Orr’s exhibit, Exotica, had signs and images edited or removed at the request of Gabelich; Orr helped curate the Debriefing exhibit. Given this, Burr feels that there is a much larger macro-idea to this micro-incident. He stated, “Apathy rules. People are more concerned with making money, and just hold it together — not even get it together, just hold it. But we must participate in the political process and not let power overtake us.”
The office of Councilmember Gabelich, when reached, insisted that their office did not physically remove any pictures nor were any photos censored during normal gallery hours. The space, a representative reiterated, is not limited to just gallery space. Both Gabelich’s office as well as the Bixby Knolls BIA feel the situation has been taken out of context, particularly given that no public viewer was barred from any of the photos during gallery hours.
The artists have officially filed a complaint with National Coalition Against Censorship in New York.
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