Los Angeles — With a cardboard cross and draped coffin, a group of activists and artists assembled in front of downtown LA’s Millennium Biltmore Hotel to stage a “Funeral Procession of Free Artistic Expression,” where Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough was speaking as part of the Town Hall Los Angeles public issues series on “New Perspectives at the Smithsonian.”
The funeral procession was organized in large part by the art protest group LA Raw and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG), in response to Clough’s ordered removal of David Wojnarowicz’s 1987 video “A Fire in My Belly” from the National Portrait Gallery’s Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture exhibition in late November 2010.
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Last Thursday January 13, there was a panel discussion at LA’s Fowler Museum titled “How Does Street Art Humanize Cities?” Organized with Zócalo, the event featured curators, artists, and reporters, most of whom were associated in some way with the LA MOCA’s upcoming street art exhibition, yet to everyone’s surprise the topic of the Blu mural whitewash wasn’t even discussed. But that’s not to say it didn’t come up in other ways. A new protest group, LA Raw, handed out condoms branded with MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch’s name on them to remind those in attendance that the erasure of artist Blu’s mural is not forgotten. One source told us that he estimates 80% of the audience to the Fowler event received one of the protest condoms as they walked in and additional condoms were placed around the venue.
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![Post image for Artists & Veterans Protest Deitch at MOCA Geffen [UPDATED]](http://hyperallergic.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/mocageffenstreetprotestHOME.jpg)
Even if LA MOCA thinks the Blu Mural Censorship controversy is going to go away, it isn’t. The institution has not responded to Hyperallergic’s requests for comments on the issue or an unedited interview on the topic of the Blu mural censorship. And now, LA Times‘s Culture Monster reports on the latest action by some street artists, including Chicano artist/Vietnam War veteran Leo Limon and Joey Krebs (aka The Phantom Street Artist), equipped with projectors at the MOCA Geffen Contemporary wall.
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Mira Schor writes about the disturbing reaction of the Gagosian Gallery (and the NYPD) during a silent protest at the gallery’s 24th Street space last week. [HUFFINGTON POST]
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Today, approximately 400-500 protesters gathered on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum to take part in a rally demanding that the Smithsonian return the censored video by artist David Wojnarowicz, “A Fire In My Belly,” to the National Portrait Gallery’s Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.
Organized by Art+, a New York-based group organizing direct action against the censorship of Wojnarowicz’s video, the march began in the middle of Museum Mile and marched uptown along Fifth Avenue until the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, which is a Manhattan-based Smithsonian institution.
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A protest is slated to take place on Sun Dec 19 at 1pm EST at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. We have links to a handy flyer and a protest action kit!
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In a protest that has become practice in China, Karen Patterson is starting a movement to flood imprisoned Chinese artist Wu Yuren (AKA “Little Ai”) with Christmas cards as a gesture of support. The artist has been imprisoned for his participation in a protest against studio demolitions since May 31, 2010.
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Washington, DC — This is a protest post. A post about a protest in the city that is Paris done in the American wide style (not the Las Vegas lights-and-money-style) on the banks of the Potomac; the city of pearly bureaucrats, and neo-cons, and neoclassical columns; all things National, American, U.S.A. This post explores the signs at last Saturday’s progressive protest, One Nation Working Together: Jobs, Justice, and Education for All.
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A group of unidentified New York art bloggers were spotted at the 2010 Whitney Biennial press preview staging an absurd protest of a painting that was lent to the show by New York’s 303 Gallery. The work, Maureen Gallace, “August” (2009), was the unfortunate recipient of the bloggers’ wrath but the protesters told me that their action was not directed towards Gallace but her gallery, 303, which continues to maintain a strict anti-photography policy that is despised by many of the city’s art bloggers.
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