Panel Discussion: Art and Controversy

The Lennie Pierro Memorial Arts Foundation in South Orange, the BA Program in Art History, and the MA Program in Museum Professions at Seton Hall University, are pleased to present a panel discussion on the subject of Art and Controversy, with moderator Dan Bischoff, Art Critic of the Star Ledger. Joining the panel are Emma Wilcox and Evonne Davis of Gallery Aferro, artist Jesse Krimes, and Barry Schwabsky, art critic for The Nation. The event is open to students, faculty and the general public at no cost. Dan Bischoff will initiate the panel with an overview of controversies in the recent past beginning with TK and “Sensation” in 1999. Included in the overview are the numerous controversies leading to the censorship of art using images of the attacks on 9/11, raising question whether certain subjects are too “controversial” for art and artists to undertake. Emma Wilcox and Evonne Davis, co-founders/owners of Gallery Aferro in Gallery in downtown Newark, will discuss their decision to show David Wojnarowicz’s “Fire in the Belly” video after members of Congress protested its inclusion in “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” at the National Portrait Gallery in 2010, leading to its censorship. Barry Schwabsky, art critic for The Nation and co-editor of international reviews for Artforum magazine, will discuss the most current controversies surrounding theh works of the Palestinian photographer Ahlam Shibli, a Palestinian from Israel whose work explores themes of home and belonging and Elka Sulcowicz, the arts student at Columbia University who is dragging her dorm mattress with her everywhere on campus until the fellow student she says raped her there last semester is suspended or expelled. Finally, Jesse Krimes, whose mural done in prison sheets, “Apokaluptein 16389067,” is at the Zimmerli Museum through Dec. 14, will talk about art’s deliberate use of controversy in profoundly different times. Krimes, recently released from federal prison after serving seven years for a nonviolent drug crime, will describe how and why he made the huge work, secretly, during his time in prison. His work exemplifies art working through controversy in an entirely new way, using the artist himself as symbol. For more information about the panel, go to www.pierrofoundation.org or contact the LPMAF at mail@pierrofoundation.org