nothin Debate Grows Over Cop-Pig Art Decision | New Haven Independent

Debate Grows Over Cop-Pig Art Decision

Thomas Breen Photo

Skinner at Thursday’s forum.

Paul Bass Photo

Skinner’s piece.

After bothering at least one correctional worker and one police officer, Gordon Skinner’s depiction of a pig cop provoked a different kind of complaint at a Ninth Square gathering Thursday night: Why was the work moved from its original perch?

That led to a broader set of questions: Whose voices matter, how much, and why?

Those questions were raised at Artspace’s Orange Street gallery Thursday night as close to 50 artists, students, activists and community members gathered to discuss the social value of controversial public art, and how both an institution and a city should respond to calls for that art to be altered or taken down.

Arptsace organized the event after it decided to relocate a work it commissioned from Skinner that depicted a pig wearing a police hat. The group commissioned the work for its annual City Wide Open Studios (CWOS) extravaganza. Skinner named the piece, one of four in a series, Cops.” He called it a statement on nationwide violence against civilians by police officers.

At first, Artspace positioned the artwork on a side wall of the Goffe Street Armory on Hudson Street, a block from the state jail on Whalley Avenue. After the two complaints, Artspace moved the work indoors to the Orange Street gallery in the Ninth Square, with the intention of broadening the debate over how and where to display controversial public art.

Artspace succeeded in that task with Thursday night’s discussion, finding itself on the hot seat. The public forum focused as much on the responsibilities of the not-for-profit itself to protect artworks from potential censorship as it did on the different ways that artists can engage with the often fraught relationship between police and the communities they serve. Skinner and Artspace Curator Sarah Fritchey put together the forum.

Mission: Conversation

Thomas Breen Photo

Saunders, with curator Fritchey: “You folded.”

The work itself, a collage of cassette tape, cut-up images, the cop-pig painting, and a milk crate meant to replicate the feel of a makeshift basketball hoop, elicited citizen complaints from a police officer and a correctional officer who took umbrage with the negative police depiction.

In response to those complaints, the city’s parks chief asked if Artspace could move the work from its original location to a place where it would have more context” as part of an art exhibition. After briefly considering moving it to a new spot near the Armory’s entrance, Artspace and Skinner decided to mount it in the Orange Street gallery instead, and to use it as fodder for Thursday night’s discussion about controversial public art.

Our primary mission for tonight is to get people in one room together to discuss this artwork and its removal from the Armory,” Fritchey said at the top of the conversation.

The crowd of artists and activists who were gathered in a semi-circle in front of her jumped at the opportunity to express frustration with Artspace’s response, anger over the specter of censorship, and optimism at the thought-provoking power of polemical art.

Why would you guys fold like a cheap camera when it comes to censorship?” local artist Bill Saunders asked Fritchey. You guys really need to raise the bar and be on the artist’s side, and not kowtow to the powers that be.”

I would put it right back up in its original location,” offered Anne Marie Brown, a student from Gateway Community College who had made the trip to Artspace with the rest of her video art class, led by her teacher, Greyson Hong.

Thomas Breen photo

Kauder, Skinner, and Key Jo Lee.

Frustrated with the absence at the forum of any representatives from the New Haven police department or from the mayor’s office, Brown continued, If they can’t show us the courtesy of showing up tonight to talk, then I say, put it back up and leave it there until they do join the conversation.” (Police officers weighed in in this article.)

Amidst these expressions of discontent, Toto Kisaku, a playwright visiting New Haven from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, offered a slightly different perspective on the very purpose of art like Skinner’s.

This conflict has generated a lot of emotion,” he said, his fluent French translated into English for the crowd by his friend, Westville artist Semi Semi-Dikoko. And that is exactly what good art is supposed to do. It is not just for decoration. We should be happy that this situation has led us all here to this conversation tonight.”

For Helen Kauder, director of Artspace and organizer of the expansion of City Wide Open Studios over the past two decades, the logical response to this controversy was quite simple: a more proactive engagement with residents in the community.

These are challenging conversations to have,” she said. But what Artspace could have done a lot better is we could have been more involved in conversations with artists, neighbors, and workers in the neighborhood about how they felt about the art. If we had done a bit more collaborative planning before we even mounted the work, we wouldn’t be in this situation at all.”

Skinner, mild-mannered and grateful for the space to discuss his art and the impact it has had on New Haven’s arts community, agreed. He also stressed the importance of having a venue like this to talk about controversial public art.

It feels really great to be supported by people you don’t even know,” he said. This conversation is bigger than me, and it’s bringing people together, both artists and activists, who wouldn’t normally be together. That’s what I want to do with my art.”

Keeping It Going

The cop-pig collage’s new spot at the Artspace gallery.

On Friday afternoon, this incident of the removal of Skinner’s artwork from the Armory is scheduled to be one of the topics of conversation at a workshop called Handling Controversy and Working with Difficult Subject Matter,” hosted by the National Coalition Against Censorship during their annual conference in Miami, Florida. Laura Marsh and Phil Lique, former New Haven artists who recently relocated to the Sunshine State, will serve as Artspace’s representatives at the conference.

Meanwhile, Kauder and Fritchey sent an email message to city officials Friday morning expressing disappointment that none of them attended the forum. They asked the officials to suggest a good time for a follow-up event.

Following is the text of that email message, which was addresssed to Chief Administrative Officer Mike Carter, parks chief Rebecca Bombero, Police Chief Anthony Campbell, Beaver Hills Alder Jill Marks, and cultural director Andy Wolf:

We are writing to send an update on tonight’s Public Forum at Artspace, organized with the hope that a recent citizen’s complaint logged against an artwork at installed for Artspace’s City-Wide Open Studios festival by New Haven artist Gordon Skinner could transform into an opportunity for individuals from the city and the new haven police department to come together to discuss our diverse perspectives on the role of art that enters the public arena and who public space should serve.

An engaged group of about 40 individuals attended the Public Forum tonight, including, Gordon Skinner, the artist of the artwork under consideration, members of the interested media from the New Haven Register and the New Haven Independent, a member of Mothers for Justice, a Board Member of the Community Foundation/New Haven Board of Ed/Neighborhood Music School, a representative from the New Haven Educator’s Collective who resides in Beaver Hills, students from Gateway Community College, graduate student and fellows associated with the Yale Art Gallery, current and past members of the Artspace Board, and local artists. 

Both the Register and NHI will have coverage of the conversation in the next day or so.

We were disappointed that no one from the City or the New Haven or the New Haven Police Department was able to attend. Throughout the conversation, the group desired to hear from the perspective of a city official, member of the NHPD or Correctional Officer. It was especially noted that the names and identities of the individual complainants from the NHPD and NHCC have not yet been shared and thus the opportunity to create constructive dialogue has been greatly diminished.

As organizers of the event with a sincere interest in working collaboratively with the City, we recognize that it is a challenge to get people into the same room to meet, so we want to make a third attempt to hold this community conversation. The first attempt was quickly cancelled when we received word that October 20th would be a better date for Becky and Michael.

Since the Department of Parks received and relayed the citizen’s complaint” against Mr. Skinner’s artwork, we hope that it will take the lead to propose a suitable date for a follow up meeting in the very near future. We ask that this date and time be mindful of working individuals who might wish to attend.

Thank you and best,
Sarah and Helen

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