|
|
 |
|
| Feature |
Controversial Collections
Elizabeth Harris
03/01/2008
|
"Crowd
Around does evoke emotion," Brandman notes.
"I have seen the piece a thousand times, and I am always seeing different nuances."
Despite his experience with controversial art objects, Brandman
says he is perplexed by people’s responses to a Philippe Starck–designed piece,
one of six limited-edition M16 floor lamps. As a hotel owner, Brandman respects
Starck’s work in interior design, as well as the lamp, a gold-plated rifle
inscribed with the words "happiness is a hot gun."
"What I thought was very interesting about this piece was the
message behind it," Brandman says. "The gold represents money and wealth—and the
gun, the idea that someone always loses in conflict, whether it’s conflict in
battle or in business. It’s open to interpretations," he adds.
But Brandman did not expect a national newspaper to reject a
story pitch about his loft’s design because of the Starck lamp. He thinks poor
timing likely played a role, because the suggestion followed a tragic school
shooting. But for Brandman, the lamp represents a concept rather than a pro-gun
stance. He doesn’t collect firearms. "Sometimes those things bring about
sensitivities," he says.
The reaction to Brandman’s lamp is mild compared to that
sometimes provoked by artwork depicting graphic sexuality or minority religious
sentiment. Last October, vandals videotaped their destruction of Andres
Serrano’s "The History of Sex" photographs at the Kulturen Gallery in Lund,
Sweden. They left leaflets that read, "Against decadence and for a healthier
culture." And in 1999, the Brooklyn Museum became a center of controversy over
the exhibit "Sensation," which included an image of the Virgin Mary decorated
partly with elephant dung.
"We believe that to share these
actual artifacts that were used to restrain, and sometimes kill, truly brings history alive."
—Gwen Ragsdale |
Museums and collectors must often balance the artistic or
historic value of mounting an exhibit with the potential pain it could cause. In
January 2007, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives in
Washington, D.C., received a rare photo album of images depicting SS officers
in Auschwitz-Birkenau relaxing in the summer and fall of 1944. Though Auschwitz
is one of the most infamous camps, where more than 1 million Jews were killed,
very few photos of it exist, much less of the officers.
"It is so arresting precisely because the photographs are so
benign," says Judy Cohen, the director of the museum’s photographic reference
collection. "You see very day-to-day activities—eating blueberries, getting
together with friends, having a drink—and yet we know from the historic record
that this is the time when the crematoriums not only were operating at capacity,
but were operating above capacity. It’s the jarring juxtaposition of how these
people were relaxed in one moment and committing mass murder in another."
A lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, a former member of the
Counter Intelligence Corps, found the album in an abandoned Frankfurt apartment
shortly after the war’s end. He gave it to the museum anonymously, Cohen says,
in the interest of "taking care of unfinished business." The retired officer
died later in 2007.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
