Haacke's homage includes quotes by the mayor threatening the museum, along with similarly philistine comments by Pat Buchanan and Jesse Helms, all of it set against a wall of trash cans and the sound of marching troops. Sensing a hook for his own mayoral ambitions, Alan Hevesi chimed in, and by the weekend, a Whitney heiress was demanding that the family name be taken off the museum. I speak in no way of the Holocaust. There are no Nazi insignias in the show, no images of Giuliani or any other politician.
Freedom of expression is the focus of the work.
Indeed, the real contrast in Sanitation is between the mayor's words and the text of the First Amendment. But Rudy has made his point. And now, any artist who uses imagery associated with the Nazis to make a statement about the contemporary world risks being tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism. Call it the Art Libel. Slander is nothing new to Hans Haacke.