The Contemporary Art Museum-St. Louis.
Note: see updates to this story at the bottom of this post.
Visit the Contemporary Art Museum-St. Louis today and you’ll notice something unusual: the entire space, including the courtyard, mezzanine, and even the building’s facade, are filled with works from just one artist: Kelley Walker, the New York-based multimedia artist behind Kelley Walker: Direct Drive.
The solo nature of CAM’s fall show isn’t the only thing that’s unprecedented. Just two days into the exhibit, St. Louis artists called for the museum to take it down over criticisms that Walker’s art—including work that appropriates and alters images of black Civil Rights protesters being attacked by police, and the covers of men's magazine KING—is racially insensitive and inappropriate, especially in a St. Louis roiled by civic unrest and still struggling to include black voices in art, politics, and beyond.
As the St. Louis American, St. Louis Public Radio, and Hyperallergic reported this week, St. Louis artist Damon Davis has called for a boycott—and ultimately a removal—of the show, which opened last Friday, September 16. Davis attended the artist's talk, led by Walker and curator Jeffrey Uslip, on Saturday and later voiced his concern in a Facebook post that's now been shared more than 500 times. (Read the full text here).
"I went to this talk to specifically ask Walker why he chose these images to use and what this art means,” Davis wrote in the Facebook post. "When confronted with an actual black person, Walker became flustered and angry and had no actual answer for why he was using these images."
Walker, who is white, was being asked in particular about two series: "Black Star Press," in which photographs of black Civil Rights protestors being attacked by police dogs were rotated and splattered with white, milk, and dark chocolate; and "schema," which includes blow-ups of KING covers featuring hip-hop stars Trina and Kelis covered in layers of laser-printed toothpaste smears.
"If you’ve been doing this, and you’ve got this image that is fifteen years old, how you could not have had a question like this, ever?" Davis tells SLM. "The way he reacted, he couldn’t talk. He just got mad. He was trying to stop the conversation. How could you not be prepared for that?" Davis adds that he, too, makes controversial work. "But I can explain everything that I did, and the whole thought process. I know what materials I used. I know how long it took me to make it."
(SLM has reached out to Walker for comment, and he did not respond by press time. Walker did not return a request for comment from the American via the New York gallery that represents him, and in response to Hyperallergic's request for comment, Walker's gallery sent an essay from the introduction to the Direct Drive catalog by The New Yorker's Hilton Als.)
Davis adds that these kinds of images Walker displays have a profound impact on people, especially on kids. ("This is what the popular culture thinks of you. That you being lynched, you being beaten and attacked by dogs and police..."). And that as rarefied as a museum can be, art absolutely has an impact on the wider culture.
"We can throw it up on the walls and look at it, and detach ourselves from the reality of what happens to people," Davis tells SLM. "And it works on multiple levels. It’s just like watching TV—'This is TV, it’s not real.’ 'That’s just a picture, that’s not real.' So us dying isn’t real. So it’s easier for people to do. If you don’t see people as human beings, then it’s easier for you to brutalize them. And that’s how it starts."
Several local artists, including Jason Kei, Chinyere Oteh, Brea McAnally, and John Blair have echoed Davis' sentiments on social media (some linking to this ArtNews post which discusses the problematic aspects of white artists using black bodies in their work; also making the rounds is this essay by Glenn Ligon, which addresses problematic aspects of Walker's work, but also defends it). Tonight, Critical Mass for the Visual Arts will hold a talk at CAM titled "Critical Conversations: Art and the Black Body, Part 1", moderated by Rebecca Wanzo, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Associate Director of Center for Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. The list of panelists now includes artist and photographer Katherine Reynolds; Lyndon Barrois Jr., artist and Museum Educator at CAM; artist Kahlil Irving; Vanity Gee, Director of Community Programs and Grand Center Operations at Craft Alliance Center of Art + Design; poet and UrbArts founder, MK Stallings; and Dani and Kevin McCoy of WORK/PLAY.
The panel was scheduled prior to the outcry over Direct Drive, but the focus has shifted over the past few days. The Facebook event page notes that organizers "have been listening to the community and we see that people wish to speak directly to their experience of the artist’s talk this past Saturday at CAM, as well as to discuss the fraught history between our local black community and St. Louis cultural institutions."
"I think all of us on the Critical Conversations committee think this should be about Damon's critique of the show, as well as other audience response to Walker's talk," Critical Mass' Joe Kohlburn tells SLM. "We changed the panel discussion on Thursday in response to a lot of feedback we got from the community. It will still take place at CAM, but the institution will not have a place on the stage. This will be Part 1. Part 2 will take place later in a different space to provide a forum completely separate from CAM. Right now we are looking to have this at The Luminary, as they have graciously offered to host. This will be our next quarterly Critical Conversation, the seventh in the series."
Artist Kahlil Irving, who was also at Saturday's talk, says he found the experience perplexing long before the Q&A began. He says during the lecture, Walker was able to describe his materials and process but never addressed the meaning of his work or his use of provocative racial imagery. So when the floor opened for questions, "I asked Kelley Walker, 'If your work is about technological advancement, and documenting technology in regards to printing, print media, advertising, reproduction of images and 3-D printing, then why are you fixated on the images of black people? And on celebrities, musicians, and images of historical racial injustice?' He asked me to rephrase my question. I rephrased it, and he responded, ‘I only have one work that has one black body in it at all.’ And I said, well, that doesn’t really answer my question, but OK."
When Davis began asking the artist about his use of black imagery, and asking him to articulate why he was doing that, Irving says Walker became increasingly defensive. Eventually Uslip intervened. Irving says an older white man sitting behind him got upset and yelled that Davis "just needed to get over it, and move on." When Irving later took the mic to comment, he overheard the same man utter, "Ugh—another one."
Irving says he had a tense conversation with two art experts from out of town that illustrates the disconnect between CAM’s Walker exhibit and the social climate in a post-Ferguson St. Louis. Irving and St. Louis photographer Kat Reynolds discussed the show after the talk on Saturday with Robert Hobbs, an art professor and historian from Virginia Commonwealth University, and curator Jean Crutchfield from New York City.
“One of the many statements they made was, ‘Kelley Walker is a sensitive artist,’” Irving says. “And I said, ‘You know, I’m also a sensitive artist, but that doesn’t mean I’ll get on stage and be unable to talk about my work critically or engage the public and do what I was paid to do,'” Irving says. Later, Irving says Crutchfield approached Reynolds (who had attempted to explain to Crutchfield why the work was problematic) to say, “You know, I wasn’t a slave, so I don’t understand.”
“This is the community that CAM has to operate with,” Irving says. “These are the people who support the museum and who are part of our history and who are writing about art and criticizing art.”
Davis says that he, for one, will not be at the museum tomorrow night.
"I support my friends, and the black artists who will be there for this talk, but I am not for any more panels," he says. "So I will not be attending that. That has rarely gotten us anywhere. And it lets the institution off the hook."
Museum director Lisa Melandri also witnessed the interaction last Saturday and has issued an apology. She added in her comments to The American that she stood by the show and invited the St. Louis community to email her directly about it, which she says a number of people have already done.
"It's really important to me to be able to have conversations with many of the people, or some of the people who have raised their voices in this, to try to decide between them and our staff, what is it that we should think about? What are the safe spaces for conversation? What are the ways that we could actually make sure we answer the queries that people have?" Melandri tells SLM. "And I’m very open to thinking about what those possibilities, and what those next steps are. This was already planned and decided upon, and now we need to look at what the next talks and actions and conversations are that we can undertake as an institution."
Davis says he is tired of talking and would like to see some action, starting with the removal of Walker's work. He adds that, just as he noted in his Facebook post, there were warnings from within the institution that the show was problematic.
"In St. Louis, Missouri, in 2016, after the biggest Civil Rights events in the last two generations happened here, you think that it’s a good idea to bring this shit here?" he asks. He adds that it also showed a lack of awareness of the local arts community, especially the St. Louis artists who have made work around these issues and received international notice for it.
"Let’s say that's all true, that [the exhibit] was there to be a critique of American culture and white racism, and all of that shit. So why the f--- didn’t you pick some black artist from St. Louis to talk about it?" Davis asks. "Why don’t you pick the people at the epicenter of the movement right now, that are creating art around that movement? Why would you go get some white dude, who doesn’t even know what the f--- he’s talking about?"
Interestingly, many of the artists who have been vocal about Walker's show will not be St. Louis this weekend. They will be in Washington, D.C., where they will be attending the opening of an exhibit at the Smithsonian featuring The Mirror Casket—a sculpture made in response to Ferguson.
UPDATE: September 29, 3:33 p.m.: CAM contacted us to let us know the museum has released a statement from curator Jeffrey Uslip. In the letter, he apologizes for cutting off the conversation at the artist's talk on September 17, and adds that the exhibit has been modified in concert with Kelley Walker. Uslip will also be at CAM for "Conversation with the Curator" at noon on October 7. You can read his entire statement here, on CAM's Facebook Page, or on Twitter.
UPDATE: September 29, 8:10 a.m.: In an email to local artists participating in the 2016 Art:314 auction, CAM's Lisa Melandri stated that because many have "expressed struggle and doubt" about participating in the event, the museum will not hold the auction this year.
UPDATE: September 27, 9:38 a.m.: The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis' Executive Director Lisa Melandri and CAM's Board of Directors announced yesterday that the museum will not remove controversial works from Direct Drive, but will modify the exhibit. You can read the full statement on Facebook here. Here's the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's reporting on this development; here's the St. Louis American's update, as well as ArtNet's take, and St. Louis Public Radio's story.
UPDATE, September 23, 8:53 a.m.:
Yesterday, De Andrea Nichols, Lyndon Barrois Jr., and Victoria Donaldson of CAM released a letter to the museum, outlining their concerns and demands; you can read that here. You can read St. Louis Public Radio's coverage of last night's panel, and the staffers' letter here.
If you missed last night's panel, Critical Mass has posted a video, which you can see here.
Kelley Walker's statement of apology, also released yesterday, can be read here.
