This morning, a Boston-born performance artist, Yazmany Arboleda, tried to set up a provocative art exhibition in a vacant storefront on West 40th Street in Midtown Manhattan with the title, “The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama,” in neatly stenciled letters on the plate glass windows at street level.
By 9:30 a.m., New York City police detectives and Secret Service agents had shut down the exhibition, and building workers quickly covered over the inflammatory title with large sheets of brown paper and blue masking tape. The gallery is across the street from the southern entrance to The New York Times building. The police officers declined to answer any questions, and at first would not permit reporters to speak with Mr. Arboleda, who was wearing a black T-shirt and making cellphone calls from inside the makeshift gallery.
Later, Mr. Arboleda, who is 27, said in an interview: “It’s art. It’s not supposed to be harmful. It’s about character assassination — about how Obama and Hillary have been portrayed by the media.” He added, “It’s about the media.”
There is really nothing provocative about the exhibit itself, except for the name. Oh thats right, it’s performance art….whatever.
I better leave my comments in the free speech zone 7 blocks away.
I can see the reason for caution, but not for putting paper over the windows. I believe everyone has the right to say whatever they want to or express themselves but looking at the window alone you can’t tell it’s “character” assassination, one might see it thinking they’re going to see a video faking their assassination or something.
Someone is always stirring things up, guess that’s a good thing right?
Stenciling letters on a window is considered “performance art” these days? The only thing that would make this more ridiculous would be if he got an NEA grant to do it.
The US of A is so yesterday.
I’ve got to say that I have little sympathy for the artist involved. Somewhere along the line he made the conscious choice to NOT put the word “Character” in front of the word assasination. That probably wouldn’t only have kept his exhibit open, but wouldn’t have offended and scared away would be viewers and…kinda gotten his actual message across instead of just going for the crass shocl value. While I maintain that it is his right to use his voive in his own way, it is my right to call him an idiotic douche.
What a moron. Did they taz him?
I hate that we live in a country that now feels the need to censor this kind of thing, and that it was the state, not the lack of interest from viewers, that did it.
The liberal outcry won’t come because they are just as hypocritical as the conservative right.
#8, Hector,
The liberal outcry won’t come because they are just as hypocritical as the conservative right.
Why is this a “liberal” v “conservative” issue. I thought it was a “free speech” v “censorship” issue.
Of course, when you have nothing intelligent to input in the discourse, just flap away about some group being a hypocrite or other ad hominem.
It’s liberal vs conservative because the liberals aren’t crying censorship like they usually do.
Substitute Dubya for Hillary and liberals hand out Emmys Oscars, tonys, Grammys and whatever other awards they control.
I feel like I should be outraged, but I’m not. The guy’s entitled to his freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean he has to be a jerk about it.
He would have been fine if he had just covered some religious figure in excrement or pissed on Bibles or Korans or somesuch. But denigrating St. Hillary or St. Obama is inexcusable and must be swiftly shut down by the police.
Seems to me like he got exactly what he wanted.
# 13 Billy Bob said, on June 4th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
#
# He would have been fine if he had just covered some
# religious figure in excrement or pissed on Bibles or
# Korans or somesuch. But denigrating St. Hillary or St.
# Obama is inexcusable and must be swiftly shut down by
# the police.
Correction: if a Koran was involved all the PC assholes in this country would have gone crazy.
Freedom of speech doesn’t allow anyone to encourage another to break the law. If, in the view of the police, it appeared he was encouraging someone to assassinate a Presidential contender, that could become a crime in itself.
Does his actions cross the line? I don’t know. Is it in poor taste? Most likely. Poor taste, however, is not significant reason to shut him down or stop him from having his little party. Remember, if you don’t like his speech or “art” then don’t listen, read, or look at it.
Excrement, urinals, Pope dildos, etc. are all in piss poor taste. None of them are there to encourage others to commit a crime.
So you would take Bill Maher off the air then and have him arrested?
Shortly there will be a new play that accuses Aristotle ONassis of murdering RFK.
Almost as silly as when the Secret Service went after a 10 year old boy for wearing a t-shirt with George bush on it with a target painted on his forehead.
Great way to waste tax dollars there feds, isn’t losing $15 billion at the pentagon enough for you?