Catholic League president Bill Donohue responds to a letter written yesterday by Joel Wachs, president of the Andy Warhol Foundation, to Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough:
The Warhol Foundation is threatening to cut funding to the Smithsonian unless the vile video of ants crawling all over Jesus on the Cross is restored. Its president, Joel Wachs, shows nothing but contempt for Christians, justifying this outrageous exhibition by branding its critics “bigots.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
This is all so typical: every time some so-called artist offends Christians—dunking a crucifix in a jar of urine or throwing elephant dung and porn pictures on Our Blessed Mother—the artistic community rushes to the defense of this trash, never once indicating that just perhaps Christians might be offended.
Wachs calls the “Hide/Seek” exhibition “brilliant, revelatory and educational.” It’s not certain what part of the exhibition he was referring to. The ant crawlers? The S&M boys with their bullwhips? No matter, he sounds downright silly when he vents that critics of these masterpieces have “trivialized” the exhibition. No, sir, we couldn’t do a better job of trivializing the “art” that you funded.
In 1959, New York Times art critic John Canaday stunned the artsy crowd when he wrote that “freaks, charlatans and the misled” had surrounded the truly creative, thereby giving legitimacy to phonies. “We’ve been had,” he concluded. And so has the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Smithsonian.
Contact The Warhol Foundation: info@warholfoundation.org
