Gainesville State College has removed from public view an adjunct art professor’s painting, “Heritage?,” that was deemed too controversial because of its use of the Confederate battle flag to make a point about differing reactions to the heritage it connotes, including slavery, states’ rights, and battlefield heroism. According to The Gainesville Times, a local newspaper in Oakwood, Ga., the college, 50 miles northeast of Atlanta, received complaints when the painting went up in a show of faculty art. The seven-foot-wide artwork shows, superimposed on an image of the flag, scenes of a lynching and of a hooded Ku Klux Klansman carrying a torch. The artist, Stanley Bermudez, said he respected the college’s decision even though he disagreed with it. “If I was in that kind of position,” he told the newspaper, “I’d have a difficult time making a decision because it’s a hard one to make.”
- 1255 Twenty-Third St, N.W.
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- Copyright © 2013 The Chronicle of Higher Education
An hour and a quater since posting and no complaints about political correctness?
If you’re defining PC as the thinking of liberals, then you’re off base because; painting was pulled because of conservative PC. No good suthn’ boy wants his flag associated with its true history of KKK and lynchings
Ah, an artist who is *a part-time instructor* is censored by a school with no principles. Sad.
Of course Georgia cannot permit a piece of art to depict the KKK, lynching and slavery as part of their proud Southern heritage even if it does also show the courage of men who died for the cause they believed in, however, evil and obnoxious.
The KKK can march through Skokie, Illinois, but up there they have heard of the First Amendment. Shame on you, Georgia.
In this case, I would really like to have seen the painting before making a judgment, although I have to say that free speech is free speech. If art isn’t protected speech, what is?
Landrum Kelly, Jr.
Livingstone College
Salisbury, North Carolina
It would be nice if the links “Heritage” and “The Gainesville Times” were highlighted better. They lead to the image and to the newspaper story, which gives a balanced sense of what happened – including the following:
“For his 7«-foot long painting, Bermudez used the traditional Confederate flag image, but added depictions of a hooded clansmen bearing a flaming torch, a hanging and an angry women in the background of the acrylic painting.
“This is very much what I feel and think about when I see that flag. It’s just my personal feelings about it. It’s an accumulation of the things I’ve seen, studied and read over the years,” Bermudez said.
“The college declined to share with The Times any of the feedback that prompted the removal of the painting; however, at least one “Southern heritage” website described the painting as “despicable” and prompted visitors to contact Martha Nesbitt, the college’s president, about the picture. Site administrators even posted her e-mail address and telephone number.”
This suggests that more than simple expressions of wounded pride were involved.
I think it will be interesting to see if Fox “News” picks up on this story. If liberals protested, you’d hear that network whine about it all day. If it is true that conservative groups forced this piece out of a show, then you won’t hear a peep from Fox OR from the horrid vast liberal conspiracy that is the mainstream media.
http://cwmemory.com/2011/02/01/is-this-image-really-controversial/
Selective outrage over state censorship threatens a vital, needed, broad consensus about freedom of expression. The issue is not who exercises a power that diminishes us all, but the inappropriateness and danger of that power itself. We have college administrations who should defend liberty of thought and expression against all comers—indeed, who should define the preservation or revival of such liberty as their primary fiduciary obligation—but who, as careerists, give in to diverse pressures and who, as ideologues, give in to diverse temptations of double-standards. Where, as here, the artist in question is part-time faculty, one must wonder, where are his full-time or tenured colleagues?
So sad that tax dollars support violations of the First Amendment.
In viewing the piece, I actually find it to be pretty tame, a bit of a pastiche like many pieces of art that reflect on the times. Like others, I am baffled that people in authority, who presumably as public servants are bound to uphold the US Constitution, evidently think their reasons for the removal of this piece of art are legitimate. One need only Google “US Flag Art” to see the many ways the US flag has appeared in various pieces, many of which use the image to make similar statements, some of which I’m sure the minions at Gainesville State would approve of and others I’m sure they would want to ban if they think this piece to be offensive. There is a reason the original 13 colonies in ratifying the Constitution insisted on a Bill of Rights, all of whom, including Georgia, also voted to ratify them. Apparently that’s part of Georgia’s heritage these particular folks are ignorant of. Perhaps they should review the reasons the founding fathers felt such protections were needed.
Shoulda, coulda, told those who objected that they could hang their own version: the Stars and Bars with opening scenes from “Gone With the Wind” superimposed.
Someone was offended. I don’t care. Ugly things have happened in this country since day one. The PC must stop rewriting history. That is the way it was. Get over it and stop lying. What do you think the next generation will say about the way YOU white washed the past and about the way YOU conducted yourselves during the 21st century. It is not very respectable. Censorship is for communists.
Stan Bermudez censored at GSC: This is a brief excerpt from the GSC Mission webpage, but these key points are not reflected by President Martha Nesbitt’s decision. Her actions contradict these stated goals and she does a disservice to the students, staff, faculty and community. How to reconcile ordering the removal of a piece of artwork by a professional artist and educator with a commitment to being a “premier teaching institution” with “high-quality academic programs” that “embody the ideals of an open, democratic, and global society?” It silences a worthwhile discussion in a safe environment that could have resulted from this artist’s expression, and now the ideas Stan raises are obscured by free speech and censorship issues. Hopefully the exposure this allows for the work will generally raise awareness and generate more buzz for what Stan exposes, issues which are urgent and affect all of us including our students and especially those marginalized in our communities. These are also issues long considered and commented on by artists globally, and reflect the tradition and field we all enjoy as artists.
Regardless of the kind of work I make or like, to eliminate expression that has clear precedent in the art world canon, to deny student and public access to that work, flies in the face of good judgement and the stated mission of GSC. We hope to show his work in Milledgeville and encourage others to do the same in their communities.
Sincerely,
Bill Fisher
Associate Professor, Chair
Department of Art
Georgia College
Milledgeville, GA
“Gainesville State College
A supportive campus climate, leadership and development opportunities, and necessary services and facilities to meet the needs of students, faculty, and staff;
Diversity in the faculty, staff, and student body supported by practices and programs that embody the ideals of an open, democratic, and global society;
Mission
The mission of Gainesville State College is to provide broad access to a quality liberal arts higher education primarily for the population of Northeast Georgia. Gainesville State College seeks to assure the success of its students and contribute to the quality of life in the surrounding region. The institution, with an emphasis on diversity and international issues, prepares students to function in a global society.
Vision
Gainesville State College seeks to be recognized as the region’s premier teaching institution by building on its tradition of teaching excellence and the strength of its student-focused and learning-centered environment. As a dynamic institution, the College will continue to address the region’s call for accessible, high-quality academic programs in an atmosphere that fosters student success.”
________________________________________
So, the KKK is bad? But, the new black panther party is protected by the government. Goes to show that the US is still a racist nations when only whites are not allowed to be racist but everyone else can be.
On the censorship argument, censorship is meant to help people “forget” about something that happened in the past. No racism, today or in the past, should be forgotten. No American should forget about the new black panther party harrassing white voters in the last election. And, no American should forget that the courts, under authority from Holder, let them off the hook for hate crimes (just because they are black.).
Georgia’s outgoing Governor, Sonny Perdue, campaigned on the promise that he would put the ‘stars and bars’ back on the state flag. After he was elected, however, and probably with the disapprobation of the RNC, he decided that putting the confederate battle emblem back on the Georgia state flag glad might not be a good idea: not the sort of thing the Republicans want to seen openly embracing–at least not outside the south. By the way, the emblem didn’t find its way on to the state flag until 1956. “A federal appeals court noted in 1997 that the 1956 resolution changing the flag was part of a larger legislative package that year from the Georgia General Assembly which included bills rejecting Brown v. Board and following up on then-Governor Marvin Griffin’s announcement that ‘The rest of the nation is looking to Georgia for the lead in segregation.’”*
Most states have a state history museum, but Georgia doesn’t. That’s not so mysterious when one considers that there’s not a single chapter in the state’s history that is not somehow associated with cruelty, repression and genocide.
The ‘new south’? Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
* http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=search&case=/data2/circs/11th/968149opa.html
What a bunch of crybabies. Get off the milk and on the steak — or at least on some good old Georgia Poultry product.
Most of us just want to truly get along – but the extremists from both directions make that quite a challenge…..
It’s not like this is the first time this ever happened. A couple years ago the President of the University of Southern Maine removed from campus an entire art show by an artist who was convicted of shooting a state trooper, at the behest of a politically active trooper organization. That President was later made Chancellor of the University of Maine System, so I guess the punishment fit the crime? But the University was permanently degraded by his action, and its reputation–and enrollments-have suffered for it since.