Tales From Federal City: The National Portrait Gallery

I had made a vow to save most of the major museums for this winter, when I don't anticipate wanting to walk around the city very much, but today I made an exception, because I had heard that a particular exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery had been the center of some controversy, brought upon it by the Catholic League, and had subsequently self-censored in a most shameful manner. Naturally, I had to go investigate.

The exhibit, for those not familiar with the story (and I will admit that not everyone follows art news or gay news as much as I do - though there are some who trounce me in one or even both categories), is Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture which, despite the rather bland name, is actually fascinating. It is an examination of the impact of sexual difference (read "non-heterosexuality") in American portraiture and runs the gamut from John Singer Sargent to Georgia O'Keeffe to Andy Warhol. The pieces are widely varied, running the gamut from photographs to abstract art, including film. And it is film which is the center of the controversy, because one of the film pieces, A Fire in My Belly by David Wojnarowicz, a gay artist who died from complications of AIDS in 1992, portrays a crucifix with ants crawling on it (about 11 seconds from a roughly half-hour long video). Perhaps unsurprisingly in these polarized times, the video drew criticism from conservative politicians and pundits, among them the Catholic League (with which I have no affiliation, and for which I profess infinitesimally small sympathy), and the National Portrait Gallery, to its shame, caved and withdrew the piece. You can read more about it here.

I doubt that I would have heard about the whole thing had it not cropped up on the Facebook monster (as much as I loathe it, it does keep me up to date on a number of things, thanks to the efforts of friends more clued in than I am), which informed me that an art-historian-friend of mine had written an article examining the symbolism behind the offending art piece. I read it and was not only positively impressed by the article, but also resolved to see the exhibit, if for no other reason than to flip a symbolic bird to the twits at the Catholic League who, apparently, have trouble understanding the concept of free speech. So after attending Mass at St. Patrick - to re-establish my Catholic credentials, if they were ever in doubt - I marched over to the gallery, stopping in the courtyard to have lunch and plan my afternoon.

The courtyard deserves special note - the only thing I've ever see like it is the courtyard at the British Museum, which is neat, but so is this one:

Is this not awesome? Better still, it doubles as a conservatory, where people can lounge about (as much as one can lounge on marble, anyway) in the company of plants and have their lunch. This is useful, because as the weather gets cold I intend to continue adventuring, but I also intend to continue to bring my lunch with me, and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit on a bench in the snow and eat my lunch. Knowing where there are heated placed where you can eat your lunch is good indeed.

After lunch I headed up to the second floor where the special exhibits are housed, and determined that the only way I could get to Hide/Seek from where I was was to go through the section of the museum dedicated to portraits of the presidents, so I did. Most of them are fairly unremarkable - either because they're the standard profile on a black background with few other details, or because they're presidents for whom I have little affection - but there are a couple which deserve special mention because they're prominent and important. Here they are:

Although Washington was the president when this picture was painted and is surrounded by the grandeur of office - the background would not be misplaced in the portrait of a monarch - he stands attired in simple clothes, a visible rejection of monarchy and the claim to absolute power which Washington could easily have made (and, to be honest, he would probably have been given a dictatorship if he had wanted one). Not that Washington is entirely devoid of feudalism - what you may not know is that his family's coat of arms provided the basis for the flag of the District of Columbia, so Washington's feudal influence continues, if not in the form of a monarchy. Coincidentally, Washington's release of power when his time as president ended is why I cite him as my favorite when my real favorite, FDR, seems like an unwise preference to make public (big government socialist!).

Abraham Lincoln is probably my mother's favorite president (although I've never asked), Civil War historian that she is, and this is one the most famous (if not the most famous) portrait of him. It is the image of Lincoln that we cherish - that of the melancholy thinker, burdened with the fate of nation and grappling with the moral - just as much as Washington's honor and leadership prowess. Not everyone who manages to attain the office is worthy of it or capable of executing it properly - witness the long succession of barely semi-competent men who preceded Lincoln, for example - but Washington and Lincoln are two of the greatest, without doubt, and their portraits have places of honor in this exhibition, as well as in the American psyche.

Well, having gotten my weekly dose of patriotic idealism out of my system, let's move on to controversy, shall we?

Special exhibitions in the National Portrait Gallery cannot be photographed, presumably because they want people to buy the exhibit catalog ($45 at the museum store), so I don't have photographs, but if you click the link up near the top of this post you can see a few of the pieces and read a bit about the exhibition. Let me say simply that I enjoyed it quite a bit, and it was well attended that afternoon, almost certainly to a higher degree than it would have been without the associated controversy. And, by the way, that story has a [somewhat] happy ending - a gallery owner will be showing a portion of A Fire in my Belly, or you can watch it online (just click that link, and then the link in that article). In all, the video is doubtless going to be exposed to many more people now that it's been booted from the exhibition than it would have had the assorted conservative blowhards kept their mouths shut. Ooops!

And as a sweet, semi-patriotic finale, I passed this on my way out: