Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 19, 1990 TAG: 9004190647
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A/8 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Each envelope marked "extremely offensive material enclosed" holds explicit photographs and drawings from the "David Wojnarowicz, Tongues of Flame" show mounted with a $15,000 federal grant.
The American Family Association hopes a good look at reproductions of 14 images displayed at the University Galleries at Illinois State University will convince lawmakers to kill funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
"We're spending $175 million in this area that benefits primarily the rich and the perverted," the Rev. Donald Wildmon, founder and director of the Tupelo, Miss.-based association, said Wednesday.
But Barry Blinderman, director of the galleries, said the exhibition's beneficiaries were the 6,000 students and middle-class residents of Normal, Ill., who turned up.
"The show received excellent local coverage and the support of a supposedly conservative media here," he said.
Wildmon also objected to a Wojnarowicz collage that included an image of Christ with a hypodermic needle.
Blinderman defended the Christ image as purely symbolic.
"In no way is the artist trying to say Christ was a heroin user. It's a poetic image that's placing the redeemer of mankind with a very contemporary issue," Blinderman said. "Metaphor can be understood by common taxpayers. Christ himself spoke in parables so everybody could understand him clearly."
Blinderman said the artist's sexual images are presented as if the viewer is peering through a telescope.
"The point of the work is that there is no one kind of sexuality in our country, and they address the surveillance of what should be private activity," he said.
Some lawmakers say Wildmon's campaign is having an effect.
"We've received 270 to 300 postcards or letters in the last month as a result of Don Wildmon writing to the constituents," said an aide to Rep. James Saxton, R-N.J.
"At this point, it's going to be very difficult for us to vote to fund the NEA," aide Jeff de Korte said.
Although Saxton supported endowment funding last year, he voted to withhold $45,000 for controversial exhibits of photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe, which included explicit images of homosexual acts, and by Andres Serrano, which depicted a crucifix immersed in urine.
Those works sparked criticism of the endowment, which also provides seed money for mainstream artistic activities from opera to dance nationwide.
Wildmon said he also was sending the package of pictures to editors of daily newspapers nationwide, 1,000 Christian radio stations, 100 Christian television stations and 3,200 clergymen.
Anne Murphy, executive director of the American Arts Alliance, a lobbying group for the arts, pointed out that some of the most respected art has been shocking, such as a Goya altarpiece depicting Christ with syphilis.
"I think there are many people who are outraged by these pieces of art," she said. "But for every one of those citizens who are outraged by the content of the art there is another citizen who is outraged by the idea that one minister will set the standards for the rest of the country."
by CNB