Bob Kerrey, Jesse Helms and artistic censorship
Friday, December 18, 2009 (19:49:33)

Posted by kara

A diligent researcher sent us the following, and we thought the NSIE community would find it of interest. This is a story of Bob Kerrey over twenty years ago, and his attempts to censor freedom of expression and attack artistic expression while a Senator.

The controversy surrounded a piece of art known as the "Piss Christ" and a letter from Jesse Helms, Bob Kerrey and others, appealing to the Senate in 1989 to stopping funding controversial artists, which lead to a long controversy resulting in severe decreases in the public support for arts in US in the following years. This had been a highly public controversy and a fairly famous public affair. The interesting thing for New Schoolers is that, among the Senators who signed Jesse Helms letter was Bob Kerry. This means that the current president of the New School was effectively collaborating with a right wing fundamentalists and bigot in order to censor the artistic expression in his political past.

To learn more about the controversy, check out Richard Bolton's Culture Wars: Documents from the Recent Controversies in the Arts, New York: New Press. 1992.

Hat tip to k for this info.