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artnet Magazine: Texas Death Penalty Art Stirs Controversy |
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Texas executes more people than any other state, and state legislators don’t like being criticized for it, either. Houston’s Democratic representative Borris Miles personally removed two artworks from an exhibition organized at the Texas capital building by the anti-death-penalty group the Texas Moratorium Network. Miles refuses to return the works, claiming that the images are inappropriate for children. The works in question are a painting of a hanged man, and an illustration of a man in an electric chair featuring the ironic inscription, "Doing God’s Work." The State Preservation Board, which regulates art shows in the Capital building, requires that exhibitions call attention to public issues, and have the sponsorship of a member of the legislature -- in this case, Miles’ fellow Democrat Harold Dutton, who has declined to take a stand defending the censored works. Texas Moratorium Network president Scott Cobb told the Austin American-Statesman newspaper that Miles had no right to censor the artworks -- and that the lawmaker should have at least gone through the proper channels to lodge a complaint. The works in the capital were a selection from a larger show seen at the M2 gallery in Houston, Feb. 10-18, 2007. The exhibition featured art by death row inmates and artists, and was juried by a committee that included Annette Carlozzi, curator at the Blanton Museum of Art, Lora Reynolds of Austin’s Lora Reynolds Gallery and Malaquias Montoya, a professor at the University of California, Davis.
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