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- <text id=90TT2128>
- <title>
- Aug. 13, 1990: American Notes:The Arts
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Aug. 13, 1990 Iraq On The March
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 49
- American Notes
- THE ARTS
- Don't Confront The Holocaust?
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> Ever since the National Endowment for the Arts stirred a
- ruckus by funding an exhibition of photographs with explicitly
- homosexual themes by Robert Mapplethorpe, NEA Chairman John
- Frohnmayer has ducked public appearances. Last week he
- testified to a commission probing the NEA's grant policies.
- Claiming that a display that "leads to confrontation...would not be appropriate for public funding," he came up with
- an outrageous example. He suggested that a photograph of
- Holocaust victims displayed "in the entrance of a museum where
- all would have to confront it, whether they chose to or not,"
- might not be fit for federal funding.
- </p>
- <p> There is no doubt that the Holocaust was obscene in most any
- sense. But there is every reason for viewers to confront--and
- remember--its horrors, whether they wish to or not. If
- Frohnmayer can equate it with pornography, perhaps it is his
- views that should be reviewed.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-