On November 18, the Brooklyn Museum of Art will host “Hide/Seek.” Included in the exhibit will be the video that the Catholic League protested last year when it was shown at the Smithsonian. The video, which features large ants running across the body of Jesus on the Cross, was pulled from the Smithsonian after we protested.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue released the following remarks today:
The anti-Catholic exhibit is being sponsored by the most anti-Catholic foundation in the United States, the Ford Foundation, and it is being shown in New York’s most anti-Catholic museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art. For decades, the Ford Foundation has given lavishly to Catholics for Choice, an anti-Catholic front group that has twice been condemned by the bishops’ conference as a fraud; it has no members. The Brooklyn Museum of Art was home to the “Sensation” exhibit in 1999 that featured elephant dung and pictures of female genitalia inserted on a portrait of Our Blessed Mother; I led a demonstration in front of the Museum.
Last year I exercised my First Amendment right to free speech by objecting to the video at the Smithsonian exhibit. Those who liked the anti-Catholic “art” lied about me by saying I called for the video to be censored. What they really wanted to do was silence me. They failed.
For two reasons, we will not stage a demonstration outside the Brooklyn Museum of Art: a) we won the big prize when Smithsonian officials voluntarily bowed to public pressure and withdrew the vile video, and b) the video has been shown many times since at other venues across the nation (we are not in the business of chasing dog and pony shows).
We are still waiting for the bigots to cut a video showing ants running all over Muhammad’s body, or maybe that of Martin Luther King’s. Then they can tell Muslims and blacks that they just don’t understand the benign message behind the video. Good luck.
Contact the Museum’s director, Arnold Lehman: Arnold.Lehman@brooklynmuseum.org
