***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
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   [Date]: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 01:25:04 -0700
   [From]: Susan Marquez <smarq@pacbell.net>
     [To]: Cultural Exchange via Internet <forum1@herz.kbx.de>
[Subject]: Re: [forum1] Re: Public Funding of Art

Chris Drew,

Building alliances between artists and art supporters (both public and private) is the awesome task before us.

Susan

Chris Drew wrote:

> There is little question that this is censorship. It is also the politics of
> a weak leader. Scape Goating! Mayor Giuliani has made a career of bashing
> artists. When politicians can make good hay of cutting up on artists this is
> not a sign of a healthy democracy.
>
> Mayor Giuliani has been arresting artists who for years sold their work on
> New York Cities streets. See http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
> for details of this struggle. The media has ignored these attacks. Then they
> trumpet this latest move without any history. The media minds not
> that local artists are censored or stripped of accessible survival options.
> But when a museum with "important" donors is attacked they hollar loud. They
> hollar too late.
>
> Giuliani knows that the art from the Museum is
> imported and marketed to a select group. He is playing the well-to-do
> against
> the poor local artist and the middle and lower income groups against the
> well to do art agencies. And his only interest is a play for power. The
> museum will survive. The poor artists are another tale without the streets.
> Many will wither while a few will survive all odd. The sum total of our
> cultural output will be diminished.