University of Wisconsin-Green Bay students gather outside Green Bay's Lawton Gallery in September 2005 in protest of the censorship of an art piece entitled "Patriot Act." The protesters wore t-shirts depicting the banned piece, which showed a picture of President Bush with a gun held to his head. photo courtesy of Dr. Stephen Perkins
Western's next president, Bruce Shepard, said he never wants faculty and students to feel like the administration is against them.
As chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Shepard’s opinion of artistic expression and censorship differed from the opinions of many students and faculty.
Shepard banned anti-Bush art from being shown at the school’s Lawton Gallery in September 2005. The decision sparked much controversy in the local press and inspired a student protest, said Lawton Gallery curator Stephen Perkins.
“[Shepard] doesn't have the right to choose what we see,” said Erica Millspaugh, a Wisconsin-Green Bay alumna who organized the student protest against Shepard's ban. “He made that choice for us, which I find troubling because it's our right in a state institution to have a democratic process.”
The controversial artwork was created by Chicago-based artist Al Brandtner and displayed in an exhibition called “Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin.” The artwork depicted President George Bush with a gun being held to his head by someone outside the frame and was titled “Patriot Act.” It was one of 127 mock postage stamps created especially for the exhibition.
Shepard said he banned “Patriot Act” because some viewers might have thought the university was advocating assassination.
“I decided that the university would not associate itself with the advocacy of assassination,” Shepard said. “It's not freedom of speech; it's not protected by academic freedom.”
Sarah Clark-Langager, Western Gallery director, said she feels the university has the right to censor pieces that are inappropriate.
“You have to look at an exhibition as a whole,” Clark-Langager said. “Is it politically charged for a good reason, or just for the sake of offense?”
Millspaugh said she thinks a state university should never censor artwork. When she learned Shepard banned “Patriot Act,” she organized a group of 30 students to protest at the “Axis of Evil” gallery opening and alerted local press. The students wore white T-shirts displaying copies of the banned artwork and stood outside the gallery so they would be visible to patrons, Millspaugh said.
“There were lots of violent pieces in the show that disturbed me; that I wouldn't want to look at,” Millspaugh said. “But every person has the right to express themselves—an expression that deals with violence is different than a violent act.”
Perkins said he brought the “Axis of Evil” exhibition to Wisconsin-Green Bay to display for the anniversary of Sept. 11. He decided to run the exhibition despite the controversy it caused in the past. When it was displayed at Columbia College in Chicago, the exhibition caught the attention of the Secret Service, who ultimately decided the artwork was harmless, Perkins said.
“My job as a curator is to show work, not withhold it from the public,” Perkins said.
A mail room employee complained to Shepard after the employee saw the image on promotional postcards for the exhibition. Shepard said the idea of the image being mailed to people who could not choose whether they saw it disturbed him.
“Everybody has the right to make any art they want to, but they don't have a right to force you to see it,” Shepard said.
The postcards spurred Shepard’s decision to ban “Patriot Act” from being shown. Faculty and students reacted negatively to this decision because Shepard banned the piece instead of holding a panel discussion on it, Perkins said.
“It left a bad taste in the mouths of many faculty,” Perkins said. “It was an act of censorship—no getting around it.”
Shepard said banning “Patriot Act” was one of the hardest decisions he has ever made.
“My big fear was that by taking that step, somehow that would inhibit our involvement in controversy, which is necessary to any university,” Shepard said. “[Controversy is] how we move forward.”
Perkins said he believes art should be interpreted symbolically, rather than literally. He said he was surprised by Shepard's decision and wondered if Shepard had other motives to ban the artwork.
He said that at the time of the exhibition, local conservative university donors were displeased with the university because liberal political filmmaker Michael Moore had recently spoken on campus. Moore is widely considered a controversial figure because his documentaries are highly critical of the Iraq war, President Bush and large corporations.
Perkins said he thought Shepard might have banned the artwork in order to avoid angering conservative university donors.
“I thought he might be willing to take the fire on [the banning] to avoid pissing off rich local donors,” Perkins said.
Shepard insists that his decision had nothing to do with appeasing local university donors, as many of the pieces in the exhibition were more offensive than “Patriot Act.”
“Green Bay is a very religious community, very Catholic, and there were a number of pieces [in the show] seriously denigrating the pope,” Shepard said. “That's fine. That's not the university advocating assassination.”
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