The Assassination of Hillary Clinton Exhibit: Freedom of expression or racism?
A controversial art exhibit was raided and shut down before it could be viewed in NYC (June 2008).
According to the NY Times blog: Cityroom, 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'.
The artist thought his racist views were protected under the Constitution because he was expressing himself through his art. Wrong.
Not 30 minutes after Arboleda set up the gallery across the street from the New York Times building, police, feds and secret service swooped in to shut the art exhibit down. While police covered the offensive storefront window with brown paper, Arboleda was led away in handcuffs to be 'interrogated'.
Arboleda, 27, learned the hard way that freedom has its limits. Later, in an interview, he said: '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.'
View the offensive artwork here:
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contemp art is art right. he went a lil farther than he should of with the name but art explores uncommon things and thoughts so this is no surprise to me. art is true expresion
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I have to say that it doesn't bother me really....it especially makes sense because now that Obama is president-elect and he's considering Hilary as secretary in state, a lot of people around me have expressed apprehension about his safety. The artist was simply tapping into the collective unconscious on this one. The weird thing about this is that black people have joked about this for years, but it's whites in my circle who are the most concerned. People shouldn't be so quick to call something racist when art can be interpreted this in several different ways.
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