University museum exhibition draws criticism
A 60-second video clip on how to commit suicide included in a visiting exhibition at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art shocked some museum patrons and the curator herself during its two-month display at Utah State University.
Julie Johnson, a professor of art history, saw the show “Medium as Muse: The museum in progress” at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis a couple of years ago. The exhibition included a short video series of one-minute clips made by various artists, she said.
Johnson said during her trip to Minneapolis, she didn’t view the portion of the video that includes artist Damien Hirst showing how to shoot a gun at his head to kill himself and was shocked to see it.
Victoria Rowe, the museum director, said the clip in question was the 16th and last clip on the video, which was available only upon request.
“Because of the European format of the DVD, we couldn’t get that one clip off in time,” Johnson said.
Rowe said during the almost two months the video was in the museum, about 30 individuals saw it, and only one complained.
Hirst indicates on his official Web site, www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/4686/hirsthome.html, that his controversial art pieces have ignited protests for years. Some of those sensitive examples include his “pickling art,” where he says he uses animal carcasses in formaldehyde to communicate his feelings toward life and death.
Rowe said depending on the definition of controversy, this has probably been the touchiest issue the museum has seen since she came in 2000.
She said the video was available only upon request because of the concern of those who object to material like Hirst’s being shown.
“If someone asks to put the video on, and someone else walks in, that’s a concern,” Rowe said.
Johnson, who says she was attracted to the exhibit in the first place because it was from Vienna, Austria (a focus of her own research), gave the idea to Rowe last fall. There was an opening for the display between Feb. 7 and March 29.
Other items included in the exhibition were giant posters (“billboard style”), newspaper spreads, puzzles that had been used on an airline for passengers, and a browsing area, where patrons could read about the exhibit, Johnson said.
The Museum in Progress, Johnson said, is an online-based museum that focuses on making an “intersection between entertainment and art.”
“They display art that is not normally in museums,” Johnson said. “The Museum in Progress considers the exhibition in the museum as merely a documentation of their art.”
Although she said she feels the USU exhibit is art, Johnson explained the Museum in Progress would consider real art to be the billboard put up near the Logan City Golf Course, advertising for the exhibit.
Johnson said most of the art from the Museum in Progress is “intelligent, witty, playful and deeply ethical.
“It deals with the boundaries between art and advertisements,” she said, explaining that there is a very fine line between art and advertising, and the online museum explores that line.
As for Hirst’s 60-second suicide clip, Johnson said she found it unethical and believed the attention given to that one artist and clip took away from the other artists in the exhibition.
“Other artists have been kind of overlooked,” she said. “Focusing on that controversy gives too much attention to an artist who simply shocks. Controversy doesn’t represent the real art.”
The problem with the Hirst video, Johnson said, was the framing conditions. The entire video is called, “Do It,” and the other clips show how to make things creatively, such as a camera out of a washing machine. Hirst’s instructions on suicide shouldn’t be put in a video labeled as such, she said.
“There was no demonstration of the consequences [of suicide],” she said.
The only other item of controversy in the museum, Rowe said, are some of the nude pieces in its permanent collection. When people complain that their tax money pays for items they find objectionable, she reminds them that the museum is funded by grants and private donations, not taxes, she said.
Rowe said this exhibit was exciting in that it was the first time the USU museum has used a video to show artistic talent.
“Video is a creative expression,” she said. “There are different forms of art.”
Johnson said the exhibition was funded in part by the Caine Foundation, the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York and the Austrian Consulate.
-emilieholmes@cc.usu.edu
Cars pass by the billboard on U.S. Highway 89-91 and 1200 South. It shows not an advertisement, but a work of art (Photos by Michael Sharp)