5.23.10 – Disconnected Conversation

There have been graffiti artists where I live, not the random taggers, but the ones that the established art world deems artists rather than criminals. One local art institution managed to bring in one of these artists to create murals on donated buildings throughout the tri-state. This interesting public art project unfortunately had one detractor last week when one of the murals was viewed offensive by the building’s owner, who then painted over the piece.

This brought about anger among artists, which ended up in somewhat of an online panel discussion on Facebook. Originally I hadn’t planned on joining this discussion, even though I live pretty much within walking distance of this now removed mural. I seemed to revert back to the learned mentality of constantly having my mother tell me to be quiet whenever I tried to argue with anyone in the family, so she could try to pretend we were a Norman Rockwell picture (as if). Finally after repeatedly hearing both informed and uninformed discussions in the neighborhood (another mural is up even closer to me) I felt the need to respond.

I believe it was a typical situation of false assumptions that went badly awry. Mostly the owner should have made sure he knew what he was getting into and asked to see the piece before it went up. If he didn’t ask, then the art institution would have been better off letting him know in order to be able to stop him from saying what he is saying, that he had no idea what would go up. I certainly don’t want to beat up the art institution having worked at other such places for way too many years and undergone the understaffing, underpaying, and lack of understanding, both internally and externally.

I think what struck me the most in the discussion was one art historian’s view that the art institution wasn’t doing enough to educate the public on the matter. It reminded me so much of what I see every time I turn on the news and hear the polls that show the inordinate amount of people who still believe that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or that Barrack Obama isn’t a U.S. citizen. We are living in a world where there is so much easy access to information, yet so many people are choosing not to access it.

I’ve said before that I was the unplanned midlife child, which means my parents are old. My mother grew up with all kinds of false beliefs and information because there was no internet or 24 hour news channels or freedom of information act. What you were told in the paper or on the radio (which everyone read or listened to) was believed. I wonder if it’s the inundating of too much information that has caused so many people to turn off or to only hear bits and pieces of the story and not be interested to hear the whole thing. My views on the Facebook discussion were characterized as the futility of it all, which to a certain extent is correct. If people don’t go to the art center and learn about the artist or read about him online then how can you have a meaningful conversation about the situation? Unfortunately this is become far broader a problem than a painted over mural. If people don’t want to fully participate in the world they live in how can you engage them?