A one-of-its-kind art installation featuring four centuries of literary text is slated for destruction – and protesters claim the "cultural vandalism" is because it could trigger “snowflakes” at next year’s Republican National Convention, the Bulwark reports.
Marty Brooks, the president of the Wisconsin Center District which runs a publicly-funded convention center in Milwaukee, plans to tear down the permanent art display – ostensibly as part of a $456 million expansion before the GOP arrives.
The art, created by sculptor Jill Sebastian when the convention center was built in 1998 and called “Portals and Writings Celebrating Wisconsin Authors,” features work from 48 Wisconsinites and includes work by indigenous and diverse writers, the Bulwark's article entitled "Tearing down art to spare Republican snowflakes' feelings?" says.
“It is a live, on-the-wall anthology that is not duplicated anywhere in the country, as far as we know, where writing is treated as being just as important as any other art form,” Karl Gartung, artistic director of the nonprofit Woodland Pattern Book Center, told Urban Milwaukee, which broke the story.
Pulling it down would be “an act of cultural vandalism.”
On the eve of its slated destruction on April 10 protesters, led by the state’s former Poet Laureate Dr. Kimberly Blaeser, mobilized to stop it – suggesting that the removal was more to do with protecting the sensibilities of Republicans rather than enabling expansion.
“Since these words have been on the walls, thousands of visitors have been reading them — stopping, stepping out of the busyness of the moment,” said author Martha Bergland.
“Now one man prefers ‘silence’ and ‘whiteness’ to the richness of these words. One man has enlisted demolition crews to take hammer and chisel to these words, to our treasures. What are the words for his action?”
“Make no mistake, they are coming for us with their sand-blasting systems. Censorship of school curriculum. Banned books. It would be hard not to see this action in Wisconsin as a part of those larger efforts.”
The protest has persuaded Brooks to halt the demolition while he gathers opinion – a process that he had initially skipped, the Bulwark reported.
“As of this memo it is all still intact, allowing me time to reflect and respond to the voices commenting on the work which we own,” he wrote.
He didn’t respond to the allegations that it was proposed to shelter convention-goers.
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