The exhibit in question sounds, well, not like my cup of tea to say the least (my family would shrug and say, "It's art!" as we always do when faced with the pretentious or obscure.)
Along with a variety of other elements, the show included a series of video loops of animals being bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer in front of a brick wall. The animals killed included a pig, goat, deer, ox, horse and sheep.
The circumstances of the filming are never fully explained (what was the artist's role? was he a passive observer or an instigator?), although the claim is that the footage was taken at a location in Mexico.
Art Institute officials said Saturday that Abdessemed had shot the videos at a farm in rural Mexico that routinely slaughters animals in the way he depicted. They said the videos were part of a social critique. "One of the things this exhibition was pointing to was the difference in production of food resources between industrialized production in the U.S. and in poorer countries," said Bratton.
It seems like an unnecessarily violent, degrading, and frankly unimaginative way to get the point across. Still, does it warrant this response?
Abdessemed's show, one of about a dozen public exhibitions that the 650-student school hosts each year, had opened fairly quietly. But as word spread among animal rights groups, more than 8,000 people sent e-mails to the institute slamming the show. Institute officials temporarily closed the show Wednesday and scheduled a public forum for Monday.But then the tone of some of the e-mails turned violent, Bratton said, with threats against individual staff members, such as, "We're going to gather up your children and bludgeon their heads." Officials decided to shutter the exhibition permanently, the first time in the institute's 137-year history that a show was closed for safety reasons. They also canceled the forum.
"Some of the people who said the most threatening things said they would be present at the forum," Bratton said.
I mean, it's not like the employees of the Art Institute actually killed any animals themselves.. And even if they had... threatening their children? WTF? If this is supposed to teach some message about how we should protect all living beings, consider the point being totally lost.
And of course various leaders are falling over themselves to condemn the show, with quotes that sound not at all out of place coming out of the mouth of some rabid troglodyte right-winger.
McHugh-Smith of the SPCA said she is glad that the exhibition was canceled, particularly because it received some of its funding from San Francisco hotel taxes. The Art Institute gets about $80,000 in hotel taxes each year, which help pay for its public exhibitions and visiting artist programs."The San Francisco Art Institute used poor judgment in supporting 'shock art' in San Francisco," McHugh-Smith said. "To take this type of brutality against animals, call it art and use tax money to support it is deplorable."
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