Taboo tableau
Last Thursday, an art exhibit opened at the DuBois Gallery in Maginnes Hall and immediately garnered flak from some students on campus. The display in question, Larry Fink’s “The Forbidden Pictures: A Political Tableau,” comprises five large, square color photographs that satirize current political leaders. At the center of the controversy is a picture of a George W. Bush look-alike fondling a laughing woman’s breast at a party.
Fink originally intended the photograph (which was to be published in the Sept. 16, 2001 issue of The New York Times Magazine, but was dropped due to the events that transpired five days prior) to symbolize what he said was the debauchery of an administration that had “stolen” the presidential election.
In light of recent political debate-churners such as the military campaign in Iraq and the USA PATRIOT Act, Fink decided to again shop the series to various publications, stating that the women in the Bush picture could now represent a world assaulted by the American “infidel.” Rejected by the Times once more, then The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine and the European version of Elle, Fink offered the exhibit to Ricardo Viera, curator of the university’s art galleries.
Viera, who had purchased other works by Fink, agreed to exhibit the photos in a high-traffic area of Maginnes. The Lehigh chapter of the College Republicans responded by calling for the series to be moved to a more neutral location — namely, Zoellner Arts Center — than the home of the school’s political science and history departments.
It is this paper’s position that not only is the DuBois Gallery a suitable location for such an exhibit, but that it is the ideal place for students to be confronted by politically-charged images.
The college years allow students to hear to a plethora of viewpoints, and it makes sense to target these ideas at students who will have some reaction to them, be it positive or negative. Relocating Fink’s pictures to Zoellner would leave them at the mercy of music and theater majors, just as moving them to the Siegel Gallery in Iacocca Hall would make them privy to future teachers and chemical engineers. And while these people certainly have political thoughts, they are not the ones who will deal with related issues for their entire careers.
No, it is the future scientists of politics who deserve this exposure to different ideologies and rhetorics — so shouldn’t they be honored to have “The Forbidden Pictures” housed a floor below their department’s office and in the same building as many of their classes?
This juxtaposition will encourage discussions and perhaps even heated arguments. What it will not do is brainwash the student body into a legion of liberals. No one will see the photographs and think, “Oh, guess I’m not voting for Bush now that he molests women.” It’s a ridiculous notion.
The onus of the university is to ensure that, in the name of fairness, free speech and an open academic environment, exhibits depicting other beliefs have equal opportunity to occupy the same space. Without the satisfaction of this condition, the diversity of ideas championed in President Gregory Farrington’s “Seven Goals of Lehigh” will emerge as a façade for a flimflamming administration bent on controlling the content of the political speech it displays.
Your burden, arduous may it be, is not to allow Fink’s artwork to reduce the state of discourse at Lehigh into a squalid pit of bickering and name-calling. Raise your standards, allow your curiosity to be sparked and participate in intelligent discussion; when you see a controversial portrayal of a political leader, don’t simply laugh.
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