Books, Arts & Manners: False Witness

Whether OR not $10,000 of taxpayers’ money should have gone to “Witnesses,” the exhibition of AIDS-related art at New York’s Artists Space, which runs through January 6, is ultimately one of the less important questions that the show raises, and so it will be dealt with first.

Because AIDS is real and because it afflicts real human beings, many of them in the arts, it is not unreasonable that a show like this should have been mounted, nor that it should have sought and received government funding. The show is serious in intent, and except for one or two photographs that some might find objectionable, it aims neither to shock nor to titillate. As for inherent artistic merit, suffice it to say that the works do not fall below the NEA’s standards (but then, what does?), and that if the NEA were ever to apply judiciously the criterion of merit, it probably could not find cause to distribute more than 5 per cent of its budget.

JG

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James Gardner

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Whether OR not $10,000 of taxpayers’ money should have gone to “Witnesses,” the exhibition of AIDS-related art at New York’s Artists Space, which runs through January 6, is ultimately one of the less important questions that the show raises, and so it will be dealt with first.

Because AIDS is real and because it afflicts real human beings, many of them in the arts, it is not unreasonable that a show like this should have been mounted, nor that it should have sought and received government funding. The show is serious in intent, and except for one or two photographs that some might find objectionable, it aims neither to shock nor to titillate. As for inherent artistic merit, suffice it to say that the works do not fall below the NEA’s standards (but then, what does?), and that if the NEA were ever to apply judiciously the criterion of merit, it probably could not find cause to distribute more than 5 per cent of its budget.