Yesterday evening, Bill Donohue held a press conference protesting the Andres Serrano “Piss Christ” display at the Edward Tyler Nahem gallery; the gallery is located on the second floor of a building at 37 W. 57th Street in New York City. He now responds to what the gallery is telling the media:
The gallery is saying that (a) the police showed up after they were summoned (b) 30 or so protesters barged into the building, and (c) Serrano confronted me to discuss the controversy but I balked. All of it is a lie.
There were no police—none (to prove me wrong, the gallery should release the names of those whom they say were there). No one barged into the building: As I entered the lobby, there were supporters and members of the media behind me, but no one bullied their way in. Serrano and I never met. We have all of this on video, so it is not a debatable issue.
Gallery officials intentionally denied me the right to enter because I am a Catholic activist whose criticisms of the display they reject. And now they are fabricating a story out of whole cloth about what occurred.
I would also like to correct a Huffington Post story: the Serrano supporters who dressed as nuns came after we left—they were not at the press conference, nor were they there when I was denied entry. No wonder the story is inaccurate. We were not there for “about 20 minutes”; rather, the press conference lasted for 35 minutes, followed by the confrontation in the lobby. A crowd of 40-50 people turned out, mostly supporters of ours. Had a reporter from the Huffington Post contacted our office about what happened last night, these errors could have been avoided.
I will discuss the gallery’s decision to stop me from seeing the exhibit, along with their lies, tonight with Lou Dobbs (Fox Business Network); the scheduled airtime is approximately 7:30 p.m. ET.
