United States museums too scared of Bush to exhibit Botero’s Abu Ghraib art

This video is called Fernando Botero‘s “Abu Ghraib” in Santiago, Chile.

Reuters reports:

Colombian artist Fernando Botero‘s paintings and sculptures grace museums and public spaces around the world, but he suddenly had trouble exhibiting his work in America when the topic was Abu Ghraib.

A series of paintings depicting U.S. military abuse of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison was rejected by all the U.S. museums to which it was offered before it found a home at the Marlborough Gallery in Midtown Manhattan, where it opened last week and will remain on display until November 18.

“Here there is total freedom of expression. That’s why it was so alarming that the museums didn’t want to show these works,” Botero told Reuters in an interview at the gallery on Tuesday, surrounded by paintings of stripped and bound prisoners being abused by guards with dogs. …

Art critic David D’Arcy said museums were hesitant to antagonize the government, especially since the uproar over photographs by the late artist Robert Mapplethorpe in the 1980s.

See also here.

Earlier censorship in the USA of art on Abu Ghraib: here.

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