Alt-Left Learns From Alt-Right, Demanding Dana Schutz Show In Boston Not Proceed

Dana Schutz's Shaking Out the Bed (2015). Collection of Vicki and Kent Logan, promised gift to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Courtesy the artist and Petzel, New York. Photo: John Kennard.

Update: The exhibition of Ms. Schutz’s paintings did open at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. The ‘Open Casket’ painting was never scheduled to be part of the exhibit, organized by the curator Eva Respini.

Read on: Outrage Follows a Painter From the Whitney Biennial to Boston The New York Times

Original Post

Now activists are demanding that the upcoming artist Dana Schutz show at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art be cancelled. Her controversial Emmett Till painting generated much controversy at the Whitney Museum this spring and is not included in the Boston Show.

Reading this latest news, detailed by ArtNet about Dana Schutz means that the Sanders wing of activists believe that they have the right to dictate not only what is acceptable in the art world but now the right of a person to be an artist at all -- if they don't like the art.

Just as I wrote last week that Linda Sarsour is driving me away from her as an activist, while causing me to question her own agenda, I feel the same way about activists who are dictating what art people can make in America.

HOW IS THAT ANY DIFFERENT THAN THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT-WING CONDEMNING ARTISTS? It's the same mentality, and it's dangerous. It's polarizing at a time when we should be uniting against the Trump agenda. It totally feeds the opposition, which is already on record saying that in 2018 they will paint ALL Democrats as socialist revolutionaries.

Art enjoys first-amendment protections in America. You can protest something you don't like, as happened at the Schutz's Emmett Till painting at the Whitney. But when you step out and say an artist can no longer show her art, you have crossed the line of all I hold dear.

I detest the KKK, but I accept that they have certain rights in America. The last time artists were jailed in America in large numbers was during the McCarthy era. Then it was only a right-wing drive. It seems that today, the far-left is ready to join forces with the far-right, as they plan what art is permissible in America.

You will have to walk over my dead body to claim that right, so let's agree that our sisterhood is limited. These fissures are opening wider on a daily basis, and they are hard to fight in the age of Trump. They gave us Trump in the first place, and they will give us 8 years and an America we don't even recognize if non-Trumpers aren't careful.

But then -- the alt-left and alt-right are far closer than most of us want to comprehend. ~ Anne