ART GALLERY OWNER ASSAULTED FOR SHOWING ABU GHRAIB PAINTING
From the Associated Press:
Lori Haigh, a North Beach district gallery owner, bears a painful reminder of the nation's unresolved anguish over the incidents at Abu Ghraib - a black eye delivered by an unknown assailant who apparently objected to the painting that depicts US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, San Francisco, Calif., May 29, 2004. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
The assault outside the Capobianco gallery in the city's North Beach district Thursday night was the worst in a string of verbal and physical attacks directed at Lori Haigh since the artwork was installed at her gallery on May 16.
San Francisco police are investigating and have stepped up patrols around the gallery. But Haigh decided to close the gallery indefinitely, citing concern for the safety of her two children, ages 14 and 4, who often accompanied her to work.
Guy Colwell's painting, titled "Abuse," depicts three U.S. soldiers leering at a group of naked men in hoods with wires connected to their bodies. The one in the foreground has a blood-spattered American flag patch on his uniform. In the background, a soldier in sunglasses guards a blindfolded woman.
Read the rest here.
This is America? This is how we defend the land of the free and the home of the brave? This assault on an innocent woman is how we honor the dead soldiers who daily come home in flag draped boxes? This is how we uphold democracy, and express our highest ideals? This is America? This has happened before—in Weimar Germany, as the National Socialist Party grew in power.
Art by George Grosz
The Brownshirts didn't like artists much, either. Their answer to dissidents, artists, homosexuals, and Jews was a fist in the face, too.
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