Paddy Johnson at the Brooklyn art blog Art Fag City reports that the Chelsea Art Museum has cancelled its November opening of The Aesthetics of Terror and its chief curator has resigned in protest. Museum president Dorothea Keeser reportedly felt the exhibition -- which was to include artists like Jenny Holzer, Harun Farocki, Martha Rosler and the Chapman brothers -- “glorified terrorism and showed disrespect for its victims," according to Josh Azzarella, one of the show's artists. CAM chief curator Manon Slome has, according to Johnson, left over the cancellation.
The museum has deleted mention of the exhibition, which was to run Nov. 21 though Jan. 31, but a cached version (with the title The Dialectics of Terror) is still available. I posted it in full at Off-Center.
Update: The Chelsea Museum of Art has released a statement, which contradicts the above. In part, the press release [pdf] reads: "Upon resigning, [chief curator Manon Slome] unilaterally decided to cancel the exhibition The Dialectics of Terror (formerly The Aesthetics of Terror) and informed all the participating artists without prior discussion with Dorothea Keeser, Chelsea Art Museum’s Founder and President, or any Museum personnel."
Reached by email on Friday, Keeser said that the exhibition will go on, but likely not at her museum. “As the show is ready to be installed and the catalogue is ready, it surely will be shown somewhere,”she said. “For the time being, we are too hurt to show it here after what happened and was said about us.”Pictured:
Josh Azzarella. Untitled #23 (''Lynndied''), 2006
Cristi Pogacean. The Abduction from the Seraglio, 2006
Sounds too me like that's precisely the kind of show that might contribute some real dialog about the aims of terrorism. Instead we get the bullshit PR-speak about being respectful to the victims, which is really code for being to scared about becoming a talking point on Fox News and pissing of a bunch of mouth breathers.
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