From: draughn@iitmax.iit.edu (Mark Draughn)
Newsgroups: alt.censorship,alt.society.civil-liberty,misc.legal,rec.arts.fine
Subject: Re: [UPI] "Judge rules artist's rights violated in painting seizure"
Date: 18 Aug 92 00:10:29 GMT
Followup-To: alt.censorship
Organization: Illinois Institute of Technology

[Followups directed to alt.censorship only.]

In article <1992Aug13.182652.25478@m.cs.uiuc.edu> kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu
(Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>Copyright 1992 by UPI. Reposted with permission from the ClariNet
>Electronic Newspaper newsgroup clari.local.illinois.  For more info on
>ClariNet, write to info@clarinet.com or phone 1-800-USE-NETS.
>
>	CHICAGO (UPI) -- Three aldermen violated an artist's rights when they
>removed from a student exhibit a painting of the late Mayor Harold
>Washington dressed in women's underwear, a federal judge has ruled.
[...]
>	Lindberg also held former Police Superintendent Leroy Martin must go
>to trial for ordering the painting taken into custody.
[...]
>	Nelson's painting, ``Mirth and Girth,'' was prominently hung at an
>exhibit of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1988 just
>months after Washington, Chicago's first black mayor, died of a heart
>attack.
[...]
>	``The combination of events beginning with Mayor Washington's death
>and culminating in the display of (Nelson's) painting had increased
>tensions in the African-American community to the point where violence
>on the scale of the 1960s West Side riots was imminent,'' the three
>aldermen said in a court filing in May.

If riots were so imminent, why didn't they happen?

This sort of thing is so hard to predict.  Case in point: in the
future, when Chicagoans look back at the '92 riots, they won't be
referring to the aftermath of the "Rodney King verdict."  The level of
violence during those few days didn't rise much above the normal
background levels.  (I was so proud.  I allowed myself to believe that
we in Chicago were somehow better at race relations than many other
big cities.)

Of course, when the Bulls won the championship for the second year,
THEN we decided to tip over cars and burn buildings.  Sigh.

>	The three aldermen are black. Nelson, who is white, said his painting
>depicting Washington in women's underwear was not intended to be racist.

This in not unbelievable.  Mayor Washington was rumored to be gay, in
part because he had never married.  There was even a rumor that when
doctors cut away his clothing in the emergency room before he died,
they found women's undergarments.  Regardless of the veracity of these
rumors, Nelson's painting seems to be a reference to them, not just a
random slam against a black person.

>	The aldermen removed the painting from display and held it for nearly
>two hours during a stormy meeting in the office of the school's
>president. Martin then ordered police to take the painting, which was
>damaged during the process.
[...]
>	Lindberg dismissed the city of Chicago from the lawsuit.

This is the part I don't understand.  This wasn't just City Council
members behaving as private citizens.  The police let them do it and
eventually helped them.  How can the City of Chicago not be involved?
-- 

Mark Draughn    | <draughn@iitmax.iit.edu> or <SYSMARK@IITVAX> on BITNET
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Newsgroups: uiuc.general,alt.censorship,rec.arts.fine