October 14, 2022 • 40 mins
Carl Andre is acquitted. Decades later, the art world remains divided about his innocence. In order to protect Carl, the art world maintained a strict separation between the art and the artist and used silence to preserve the status quo. But a few remain vocal.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Pushkin. This show contains adult language and occasional descriptions of violence.
Please keep that in mind when choosing when and where
to listen. Previously on death of an artist. So the
(00:31):
best way to protect him was to respect his wish
for rural silence, I would say, and also to take
him at his word. I couldn't establish that she wanted
to get a divorce as she feared his reaction, and
I couldn't talk about any of that. How can it
be that there can be so many curators in these
(00:52):
institutions and one curator can't say I'm uncomfortable with that show.
This is press play. I'm Madeline Brand. Let's talk now
about some bad news that's hit a couple of local museums.
Mocha Downtown has fired its chief curator, Helen Molesworth. To
(01:13):
talk about these stories, we have Caroline and Miranda with us.
She writes the Culture High and Low column for the
La Times. I think she was an important get for
Los Angeles at the curatorial level and a scholar who
was really devoted to rewriting the history of art in
the sense of making sure that it was more inclusive
of women in particular. She's a feminist art historian as
(01:34):
well as people of color. Helen was very dedicated to
the idea that part of her job was to look
at what had been overlooked. Well, that's me they're talking
about on the local radio station. Everyone I know listens to.
To be honest, I still find it embarrassing. I started
(01:55):
working in junior high school. I've always had a job,
and I mean like job, job anyway, as you can tell,
I got fired and if that wasn't bad enough, I
got fired very publicly, like New York Times coverage. Publicly. Okay,
So apparently Helen Molesworth clashed with the director of Mocha.
(02:18):
What were the disagreements about. I think some of it
came up last month when the artist Marked Grochan, who
was scheduled to be honored at the gala, ended up
with drawing his name from the gala, saying that what
Mocha really needed to do was be honoring somebody else,
that he would have represented the third white male artist,
(02:38):
straight white male artist in a row that the museum
was honoring. And as part of that news, the board
member Larry Pittman ended up resigning from the board, and
Larry is a part Colombian painter. He's Latino. He is
also gay. He came out in the nineteen seventies, and
he said that he felt that the museum was not
really as devoted to issues of inclusion and diversity as
(02:59):
they might be paying lip service to the mission of
a museum is fundamentally twofold to educate the public about
art and to decide what art is good enough to
be saved in perpetuity. This is a nice way of
saying that part of what a museum does is decide
(03:19):
why some art is better than other art, why some
art is considered great, so great that it's worth the time, money,
and energy it takes to display, interpret, and save it.
Honest story made me realize how much DNA museums share
with courts of law. Both are institutions where the basic
(03:42):
rules were written centuries ago, and both have been historically
run by highly educated, affluent white men, experts who come
together to decide upon the merits of this, that or
the other piece of evidence. In museums, this work is
done by curators and the justices. It is done by
lawyers and judges. The rub is once a decision is made,
(04:08):
the exhibition opens or the verdict is read, the public
never sees what's been left out. The process itself of curating,
of adjudicating, of choosing this, but not that this is
also a process of silencing. We've all done this. There's
no way to tell a story without leaving something out.
(04:29):
We have done it with the story we are telling you.
The question is what are the ramifications of those omissions
or suppressions. In Animandietta's case, there were at least two
pockets of silence. There was the historical omission of art
(04:49):
made by women in museums, and there was the suppression
of crucial pieces of evidence in the trial. Both would
have an enormous effect on how her art was understood
and how people saw her death. I'm your Host Helen
Molesworth from Pushkin Industries, Something Else and Sony Music Entertainment.
(05:11):
This is Death of an Artist, Episode five. The silencing
the People versus Andrea stretched over two weeks during the
(05:32):
winter of nineteen eighty eight. Ironically, Anamandietta's first retrospective exhibition
at the New Museum was closing just as the trial began.
The show had been hastily thrown together by her supporters
and visitors to that show would have seen photographs of
her body pressed into the ground, photographs of her stone
(05:53):
carvings from Cuba, and her delicate drawings of primordial female forms.
At the trial, however, the defense painted a picture of
Anna that veered more towards caricature than reality. And I
remember they asked me these questions, like I guess they
were trying to establish that she killed herself, like if
this was some sort of like culminating art piece, that
(06:16):
she killed herself, which is ridiculous. The strategy started on
the very first day when Natalia Delgado took the stand.
When Carl's lawyer Jack Hoffinger questioned Natalia, he didn't ask
about Carl and Anna's relationship. He wanted to talk about
Anna's artwork. And they kept talking about impact body impacting
(06:37):
on the earth. And I could see how they could
try to make that argument, because she would like press
herself into the earth, or she would like cover her
withself with mud and stand against a tree. But thing
her work was about the human body and all sorts
of things in nature, and it was not at all
about impacting on the earth. Carl's lawyers insinuated that the
(06:58):
evidence for suicide was Anna's artwork. Hoffinger suggested that her
use of blood and earth were signs of an unconscious
death wish. Never mind. Anna's own explanation of why she
used blood again, read by artist Tanya Bugera. I started
immediately using blood, I guess because I think is a
(07:19):
very powerful, magical thing. I don't see it that's a
negative force. For Anna. Blood was a way to connect
art with everyday life. Blood was real and using it
was a way to make art with the stuff of
the world, the stuff of the body, not something fake
or pristine. Anna's friends in the courtroom, such as be
(07:43):
Ruby Rich, could see where it was all headed. It
was totally blamed the victim, but with an extra twist.
It was completely racist. It was constructing an idea of
this hot blooded latina who drank and misbehaved and quote
went out a window. It's starting to get ugly, and
it's all the uglier because it's such an old move.
(08:04):
If you're a defense lawyer defending a murder, you always
want to put the dead person on trial. You always
want to dirty up the victim as much as you can.
That's Ron Koubi again, the longtime defense lawyer who helped
us understand some parts of the trial. What he doesn't
say is that when you put the victim on trial,
(08:25):
the perpetrator gets to sit silent. And Jack Hoffinger was savvy,
a top notch criminal defense lawyer. His first line of
attack paint Anna as a drunk. The way that the
drinking played into the trial was disturbing. The drinking was
pinned on Anna and not pinned on Carl. How do
(08:47):
you explain that they were drinking all night together in
the same room, but her corpse gets the blood alcohol
test his living body evidently doesn't. Anna had a blood
alcohol level of zero point one eight, well above the
legal limit for driving. Notably, no evidence was submitted about
(09:08):
Carl's blood alcohol level. Hoffinger suggested that Anna was so
drunk she might have accidentally fallen out the window, a
theory that did not account for the significant height of
the window sill halfway up her body at least, and
her well known fear of heights, which her friend Marcia
Pelle's testified to. But seating doubt was the point. They
(09:33):
weren't trying to prove what happened, They were trying to
create reasonable doubt if she was drunk. It could have
been an accident, and if it wasn't an accident, then
maybe it was a suicide. Here's Lisa Phillips, currently director
of the New Museum, who attended the trial when she
was a curator at the Whitney. They used every single
(09:56):
stereotypical image they could dredge up as some indication that,
you know, hot blooded, tempestuous, that she would throw herself
out the window. I don't believe that she committed suicide,
that's for sure. The suicide theory was, for Anna's supporters,
completely bogus. It simply did not jibe with Anna's personality.
(10:22):
To further the suicide theory, Hoffinger also focused on Anna's
interest in the Afro Cuban religion Santaia. Remember what her
friend el Triano said about her, that she was not
a Santa that she was interested as a scholar, not
a practitioner. But Santaria was useful for Carl's case. There
(10:45):
are no witches in Santaria, but that didn't stop Carl's
lawyers from using the oldest play in the sexist handbook,
basically wonder out loud about whether or not she's a witch.
Carl's attorney, Hoffinger basically based his analysis of why she
might have commuted suicide on Sandvidia on voodoo, and this
(11:08):
was very, very disturbing. Huffinger knew Anna had named some
of her artworks after Afro Cuban deities, including one called
yema Yah. He asked one of her friends about her
interest in the deity. On the witness stand, the friends
said yem Yah is a deity that takes flight. She
(11:30):
was interested in researching it. And in a statement that
brought a hush over the courtroom, the witness said, yem
Yah takes flight on September seventh, and everyone knew that
Anna went out the window on September eighth. Eltriana was
horrified when she heard this testimony. I think he really
(11:51):
hit below the belt when he decided to speak about
ye my Yah, sort of saying that Anna had conceived
of her death, saying that she may have done this
in the context of her artwork. The reason Ella thinks
this is below the belt is not only is it wrong,
(12:14):
Yemaya does not take flight. She is a deity connected
to the ocean and is often imaged as a mermaid.
It's also highly disrespectful. Yemaya the goddess of motherhood and
the Ocean, is the highest ranking female deity in Santaria.
Implying that Anna's interest in Yemaya led to a death
(12:34):
wish is analogous to wondering if a woman who believes
in the Virgin Mary is responsible for her son's death
at the hands of others. Kokofusco, the artist and author
of Dangerous Moves performance in Politics in Cuba, was also
horrified when she heard what was unfolding in the courtroom.
(12:57):
I was having conversations with all these different people about
the trial, which was very dramatic. I personally did not
go to the trial. But what I remember that was
particularly upsetting to me was the utterly racist interpretation of
her work. This idea that somehow or other, because she
(13:17):
had really an anthropological interest in Afro Cuban religion, that
that automatically meant that she was some kind of crazy
person involved in voodoo. Because the Americans didn't differentiate at
the time between Santheia and Vulu, even though the roots
African roots of those two religions are entirely different, but
(13:39):
they were utilizing stereotypes about voodoo that come from Hollywood
musicals right about people losing their minds, and that was
not the relationship that Data had to Santania, which she
studied academically. It was unclear what the judge thought of
all this, and that mattered a great deal, as the
(14:00):
verdict rested solely on his opinion. But it was clearly
upsetting to Anna's friends. They believed in her as an artist.
She wasn't experimenting with voodoo or Santarilla. She was someone
on the cutting edge of performance in land art, making
gorgeous work about our relationship to the earth, to the land,
(14:21):
two ideas of home. She was interested in Stonehenge and
Egyptian pyramids and Native American rock carvings. Anna's supporters, even
Robert Katz, who attended every day of the trial, were
surprised that Karl was allowing Anna to be portrayed as
someone who was suicidal or crazy. Of course, for the lawyer,
(14:43):
it was a necessity. Here's what Hoffinger said to Robert Kats.
He did not encourage any any kind of denigration of
Anna in any way, shape or form. We did not
want that, and we did our best not to go
too far. Even though they'd tried not to go too far.
(15:04):
Anna's supporters clearly thought they'd sullied Anna's reputation. They'd implied
she was a drunk. They'd painted a picture of someone
who was unreasonable, hot headed and out of control, someone
who was troubled and caused trouble. And part of the
reason they were able to describe her this way is
precisely because there are no metaphorical mothers in art history,
(15:28):
no backdrop of women geniuses to connect her work to. Meanwhile,
Carl sat silent. Here's El Troiano again. The trial was insulting.
Watching Carl sitting there reading during the trial was insulting.
The day of closing arguments coincided with the opening day
(15:51):
of Carl's exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Madrid, a
soaring nineteenth century pavilion where white cast iron column defintely
hold up a roof and walls made out of glass.
The images of the exhibition online look gorgeous. We see
Andre's somber metal plates on the floor with all of
(16:11):
this light and air above them. It made me wonder
about how much of what I love about Carl's work
is that he broke the do not touch rule? Was
he able to break that rule because he thought the
rules didn't apply to him. I thought about how much
the art world values rule breakers, and I wondered, on
(16:32):
that last day of the trial if any of the
visitors in Madrid were thinking about Carl, who was waiting
in the courtroom to see what, if any, rules would
apply to him. On February eleventh, nineteen eighty eight, Judge
(16:57):
Lessinger had a verdict. The players assembled. There was Anna's
family and friends, a small press contingent, and Carl still
in his workers overalls alone except for his lawyers. When
the judge took his bench, the courtroom was silent. The
judge said, quote, I have concluded that the evidence has
(17:21):
not satisfied me beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant
is guilty. Carl Andre had been acquitted. As the courtroom emptied,
reporters gathered around Anna's family and listened as Anna's mother said,
I know he killed my daughter. Meanwhile, Carl and his
(17:44):
lawyer were also surrounded by reporters. Carl's only comment, justice
has been served. Carl's lawyer, Jack Hoffinger, later talked to
Robert Katz about the outcome. This was a very important
case because what it proved was that the system works
because that system, that trial pertects us against unfair accusations,
(18:06):
every one of us, You, me, everyone else. Carl shared
the news of his acquittal with his friends Saul and
Carol LeWitt. He said that justice has been done, I
said I regulations all. While a civil case requires a
(18:28):
preponderance of evidence, criminal trials demand an even higher form
of proof. Guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt.
This means no other plausible explanation can be gleaned from
the evidence that makes it to trial. Here's Ron Koubie,
(18:48):
the defense lawyer. Again, the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt.
The promise most people don't make decisions in their life
based on proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Basically, regular people
on a jury are used to making decisions based on
what they think makes the most sense, using the information
(19:11):
they have, whereas a judge is accustomed to using a
higher standard of not just reasonable, but beyond a reasonable doubt.
And so when you have somebody who the jury is
not gonna like, who already looks squirrely because of what
he perveys for a living, and who probably did it,
(19:35):
that person is probably going to be convicted again. Judges
tend to apply that beyond a reasonable doubt standard more
carefully in a case like this, they recognize this evidence
is circumstantial. Judges tend to be more meticulous about what
(19:55):
a reasonable doubt is. I for sure understand his point.
There's an ethical elegance to reasonable doubt and its presumptions
of innocence until proven guilty. My problem is I have
what I consider to be reasonable doubt about Carl Andre's
(20:15):
not guilty verdict. And one of the many reasons I'm
skeptical is because there is no official record that any
of this happened. When Carl was acquitted, his trial records
were permanently sealed. Not even the Freedom of Information Act
can open them. And we tried pretty hard to get
(20:36):
these records, but it turns out the only person who
can open them is Carl. This means all of the
evidence from the nine one one call to the polaroids
of the scratches is now gone from public view. All
of the case documents in the hands of the police,
the DA's office, and in the courts are unattainable to
(20:59):
lay people in any fashion whatsoever. Even their existence will
not be confirmed. This is how New York State protects
those found not guilty. I have a lot of trouble
accepting this. None of Carl's friends at the trial to
hear what might have happened. Carl never takes the stand
(21:19):
and never had to answer a single question publicly. Carl
would go more than two decades without saying anything publicly
about Anna. Silence was the play, and it worked. Carl
Andre is an extremely private person, as you may have guessed.
I mean, he doesn't want his photograph taken. You can
publicize his works, but you can't talk about his private
(21:41):
life with him. He won't talk to you about it.
I mean, that's a publication, if you know what I mean.
He might talk if your friends, but doesn't want the
world to be And one of the horrors of this
case is that to some extent, his life and her
life would publicize, which is not something he wanted to do.
That's Carl's lawyer, Jack Hoffer again. And it's certainly true
(22:02):
that Carl steered clear of the press for a very
long time. But when The New Yorker and the New
York Times came calling in advance of his big retrospective exhibition,
his opposition to discussing his private affairs did not hold.
He answered questions, he allowed his photo to be taken.
He even appeared in a short video made by the newspaper.
(22:25):
But I must say, as I have grown older, my
physical capacities have been very much reduced. So I used
to be able to sling those timbers around like nothing
at all, and I don't want to try nowadays. In
the years immediately following the verdict, Honest supporters spoke openly
about the investigation, the trial, and the acquittal. Friends and
(22:47):
family spoke to Robert Katz for his book Naked by
the Window, and his interviews, combined with the fact that
he had both seen the documents that were now sealed
and had attended every day of the trial, meant Katz
was the only person who knew the whole story, such
as it could be told. When the book came out
(23:08):
in nineteen ninety, there was a small flurry of press,
but even though his book was exhaustively researched, he and
a colleague together conducted more than two hundred interviews. I've
heard more than one art world insider referred to it
as quote but horrible book because it was written in
the language of journalism. Many people thought it was sensational
(23:32):
and unnuanced. He was an outsider who just didn't get it,
and being skeptical about the way the book was written
meant folks didn't have to grapple with its conclusions. And
then life went on. Carl spent time in Europe. He
continued to live in the same apartment, he remarried, he
(23:53):
showed at the same galleries. He still made art, and
his work continued to sell well. Number two seventeen is next.
This is the Carlandre nineteen prime rectile that's worked from
nineteen seventy seven, and it's opened this now at one
ten one twenty one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. So
while Carl's story might have made some folks uneasy as
(24:16):
a story, as a problem, it moved to the background.
There was less and less talk about what happened, and
eventually most of honest supporters stopped talking about Carl and
the trial too. It's like he's been scrubbed from the record.
They'd rather talk about her art in her life, they'd
rather secure her legacy, and they'd prefer to do so
(24:39):
in a context that doesn't include Carl, who can blame them,
even if oddly it contributes to the silence. It wasn't
until there was another extremely horrible and very public accusation
of espousal murder, but the conversation would be reignited. We
(25:00):
the jury and the aboved entitle action find the defendant
Ornhal Jane Simpson not guilty of the crime of murder.
Across the nation and around the world, virtually everyone watched
as judgment day came swiftly for OJ Simpson. Remember the
Gorilla Girls, the anonymous group of feminist artists dedicated to
(25:21):
calling out the sexism of the art world. The O. J.
Simpson acquittal inspired them to make another poster, so we thought, well,
let's bring this up again, because it really was a
related situation. It was clear that something went on between
Carl Andrea Anamantia and she ended up dead and O J.
(25:42):
Two and both of them got off the hook. That's
one of the Gorilla Girls. They made a poster in
nineteen ninety five that placed a snapshot of Carl in
profile next to a head shot of one of the
most famous and celebrated athletes in the world. O. J.
Simpson reasoned across the top was the question what do
(26:03):
these men have in common? What do these men have
in common? Every fifteen seconds, another woman as assaulted by
her husband or boyfriend. Some of these assaults end in murder.
Usually there are no eyewitnesses to these crimes. Unlike their
other posters, there was no humor, no sly commentary, nothing
(26:23):
to ameliorate the pain. There was something very stark about
seeing Carl's face right next to OJ's, but comparison was undeniable,
and it seemed to puncture any exceptionalism the art world
was banking on for itself. These would have gone up
around Soho and in the East Village, where there were
(26:43):
a lot of artists living and a lot of fledgling galleries.
The Guerrilla Girls were directly linking Anna's death to the
increasing awareness of domestic violence, an issue that had just
begun to be part of a public conversation. The Oj
simpsonral was on TV all the time, and the story
(27:04):
of domestic violence and domestic violence homicides went from the
back page to the front page. This is Este Solare,
one of the women behind the nineteen ninety four Violence
Against Women Act, the first bill to fully address domestic violence.
She worked the halls of Congress hard in the nineteen
eighties and had to endure one congressman calling it the
(27:25):
quote take fun out of Marriage Act. And people started
really talking about the fact that so many other women
were victims of domestic violence, and people were given license
to come out and talk about it more as well,
because it was such a public narrative. Before, oj Esta
practically had to beg newspapers and news outlets to write
(27:47):
about domestic violence. Now her phone was ringing off the hook.
It was absolutely clear he was guilty. The court said
he was innocent, and I've spent a lot of time
with Nicole's family and they don't think he's innocent at all.
Whatever the court said, the trial nevertheless put domestic violence
(28:10):
and spousal homicide front and center. The trial and the
story was transformative in terms of how the US warhold
really saw the issue of domestic violence again. It really
took on, Oh my god, this is really a serious problem.
(28:33):
It was a turning point. The issue went from the
privacy to the public sphere pretty dramatically. The Gorilla Girls
suggested that on a story wasn't merely a unique instance
depending on how you saw it of a drunken accident, suicide,
or an argument gone wrong. Honest story was part of
(28:53):
a much larger social problem. More than ninety percent of
women who are murdered are killed by when they know
the perpetrators are often their husbands, boyfriends, or exes. But
the awareness of domestic violence as an issue was just
starting to be named as a problem when Anna died.
Early on and the eighties and the late seventies, women
(29:17):
were being beaten and battered and most people didn't know
about it. It was private, it was silent, it was hidden,
and more than that, more than that, they were often
blamed for what happened to them. So it was a
combination of feeling invisible and also responsible. Before Nicole Brown
(29:41):
Simpson's death made domestic violence visible, it was typically considered
a private matter, and because it was private, it was
not to be spoken about publicly. This silence almost always
benefited the aggressor rather than the victim, and while Oj
wasn't convicted because of this visibility, he suffered consequences, Carl
(30:03):
did not. He lost his endorsements, his television and movie
appearances evaporated. He was effectively shunned. The art world took
no such extra judicial measures. If you look at Carl's resume,
easily available on his personal website, you'll find that he
has exhibited often multiple times, every single year since nineteen
(30:29):
eighty five. His shows were reviewed in the New York Times,
and then in twenty eleven he landed a coveted profile
in The New Yorker. It felt like an attempt to
revise his reputation before he got the biggest feather in
any artist's cap a major museum retrospective. And it was
(30:51):
in the New Yorker profile where he finally broke his
silence and offered the following version of what happened that night.
Here's what he said, read by a voice actor. I
was asleep. I was in bed, and when I heard
cries of no, no, no, it had been quite balmy,
like eighty degrees, and the temperature went down to about
(31:14):
sixty All of a sudden, what Anna did was to
get up and start closing the windows because cold air
was blowing in. Anna had to climb up. She was
barely five feet. To close those windows, you had to
do it from the middle so they wouldn't jam, and
(31:35):
in trying to close those windows, she just lost her balance.
This is Carl's a fourth version of what happened, and
it's entirely different from the previous versions. Is it really
any wonder that so many people still don't believe him?
An artist named Elise Rasmussen even researched the story and
(31:59):
check the weather for September eighth, nineteen eighty five, No
big temperature drop occurred. Was the power structure of the
art world really deaf to the protests of so many women?
Did white men hold so much power that they can
continually change their story and still expect everyone to take
(32:20):
their word for it. Did Carl's calling it an accident
after twenty years somehow make the art world think that
it was outside of or above the problem of domestic violence?
Did we think we were that different from everyone else? Yeah,
(32:52):
so you have an inda, I do okay. Doctor Kelly
Morgan is a scholar turned curator who also had a
dramatic departure from her job. I wanted to talk to
her because she and I had pretty much opposite instincts
about how to handle things. When it all went down
(33:14):
for me in twenty eighteen, My first instinct was silence,
and that was pretty much the only thing me and
the museum agreed upon. Hence the NDA, which for those
listeners without one, is a non disclosure agreement. Another method
of procuring silence. What do you think breaking your silence
(33:35):
would mean having the power that you have in the
field and the reverence that you have in the field.
Part of my silence in the wake of being fired
was I didn't know how to actually tell the story.
And part of it is fear that people would come
(34:01):
at me in a variety of ways, financial or reputational.
My first worry was money, how would I pay my bills?
As for the reputational stuff, I knew what could happen
to strong willed women in the press. Kelly also felt
the fear, but silence was not her play. I asked
(34:24):
her to tell me what happened that led up to
her dramatic exit from the Newfield's Museum in Indiana. It
was a lot of things, but the tipping point came
at an acquisitions meeting, the meeting during which the curators
present works of art that they think are good enough
to display and save. In these meetings, curators typically make
(34:45):
a deeply researched presentation on the artist's work to a
committee of collectors and philanthropists whose job it is is
to provide the funds for the purchase. So we get
to this meeting. The vase has Colin Kaepernick on one side,
John Brown on the other side. Is called the Expulsion
of Colin Kaepernick, and we're discussing it, and we has
(35:07):
a very like a high level donor, and he just
goes on this rant about, you know, Colin Kaepernick was
wrong and African Americans don't use their money correctly, and
just like all of the races, neoliberal capitalist bullshit. So
I get up and walk out of the room. And
then the subsequent response, you know, from leadership, because he
(35:29):
was such a high level donor, was that I had
just acted unprofessionally. In two decades of museum work, I
have never seen a curator walk out of a meeting
with trustees. I can't lie. I kind of wish I
had been there to watch Kelly's rebellion. Ultimately, she decided
that walking out wasn't enough, so she wrote an essay
(35:51):
about racism in art museums. The essay pretty much discusses
the nature of white supremacy culture as I've experienced and
sit in art museums and then before she could get fired,
she sent her boss, as well as all of her
colleagues and the local press, a scathing resignation letter that
(36:13):
called out the racism she'd been experiencing on the daily.
I went to the press because I was just kind
of sick and tired, you know, of how bad things
were going. And it was something that happens to all
museum professionals to some degree, whether it's class discrimination, gender discrimination,
(36:36):
racial sexual discrimination. There's a history, there's a tradition, and
I kept thinking that eventually I would get some like
Ceason desist letter. She never did get a season desist,
but what did come was a barrage of casual slander
and some very real death threats. And there's a very
prominent arts leader who has no problem, you know, telling anybody,
(37:02):
like at a party or a dinner or like you know,
on a zoom call or whatever, that he feels like
I desire to be shout at a vase, and that
his several people call, let's say, are you aware you
know that this person is like saying this stuff for us?
And yeah, I know. I envy Kelly's courage and ability
(37:24):
to speak freely about her experience, though it pains me
deeply that she has such stories to tell. We all
know that speaking up has real consequences. It's why so
many victims of domestic violence stay quiet. It's why the
Gorilla Girls are anonymous. But there's a difference between those
who are silenced and those who choose to stay silent.
(37:47):
And by now it's clear that the silence that calls
me the most is carl Andres. He didn't take the stand,
He didn't provide an explanation to honest family or her friends.
He had no words for the community. He was such
a prominent member of a community torn apart by what happened.
(38:08):
The records of the trial were permanently sealed, and according
to Robert Catz, the strategy was to maintain this silence
moving forward toward the end of Naked by the Window.
He wrote quote. Sometime after the trial, a meeting was
held to the Paula. Cooper Gallery, where it was decided
that no one among the participants would ever again speak
(38:31):
of the case. So, in a last ditch effort to
see if we could crack the wall of silence, my
producer suggested we go to Carl Andre's apartment to see
if he'd talked to us face to face. It's a
huge building and it's about fifteen floors higher than any
other building. Yes, it's around much taller than it's neighbors.
(38:54):
It's really disturbing how high it is. All right, revolving
door here, We got hi? How are you? That's next
time on Death of an Artist. Death of an Artist
(39:15):
is a co production between Pushkin Industries, Something Else and
Sony Music Entertainment. Written and hosted by me Helen Muldsworth.
Executive producers are Lizzie Jacobs, Tom kinig Leetel Mulad, Jacob
Weisberg and Lucas Werner. Produced by Maria Luisa Tucker, editing
by Lizzie Jacobs. Our managing producer is Jacob Smith. Associate
(39:37):
producers are Pooge Rue and Eloise Linton. Additional production helped
by Tally Abacassas. Voice acting by Nick Barrain. Anna Mendieta's
quotes were read by Tanya Brigera, engineered by Sam Bare,
fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. Our theme song is
by Pooge Rue. If you love this show, consider subscribing
(40:04):
to Pushkin Plus to listen early add free and get
exclusive bonus content. Look for the Pushkin Plus channel on
Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm. Find more great
podcasts from Sonymusic Entertainment at sonymusic dot com. Backslash Podcasts
Pushkin. This show contains adult language and occasional descriptions of violence.
Please keep that in mind when choosing when and where
to listen. Previously on death of an artist. So the
(00:31):
best way to protect him was to respect his wish
for rural silence, I would say, and also to take
him at his word. I couldn't establish that she wanted
to get a divorce as she feared his reaction, and
I couldn't talk about any of that. How can it
be that there can be so many curators in these
(00:52):
institutions and one curator can't say I'm uncomfortable with that show.
This is press play. I'm Madeline Brand. Let's talk now
about some bad news that's hit a couple of local museums.
Mocha Downtown has fired its chief curator, Helen Molesworth. To
(01:13):
talk about these stories, we have Caroline and Miranda with us.
She writes the Culture High and Low column for the
La Times. I think she was an important get for
Los Angeles at the curatorial level and a scholar who
was really devoted to rewriting the history of art in
the sense of making sure that it was more inclusive
of women in particular. She's a feminist art historian as
(01:34):
well as people of color. Helen was very dedicated to
the idea that part of her job was to look
at what had been overlooked. Well, that's me they're talking
about on the local radio station. Everyone I know listens to.
To be honest, I still find it embarrassing. I started
(01:55):
working in junior high school. I've always had a job,
and I mean like job, job anyway, as you can tell,
I got fired and if that wasn't bad enough, I
got fired very publicly, like New York Times coverage. Publicly. Okay,
So apparently Helen Molesworth clashed with the director of Mocha.
(02:18):
What were the disagreements about. I think some of it
came up last month when the artist Marked Grochan, who
was scheduled to be honored at the gala, ended up
with drawing his name from the gala, saying that what
Mocha really needed to do was be honoring somebody else,
that he would have represented the third white male artist,
(02:38):
straight white male artist in a row that the museum
was honoring. And as part of that news, the board
member Larry Pittman ended up resigning from the board, and
Larry is a part Colombian painter. He's Latino. He is
also gay. He came out in the nineteen seventies, and
he said that he felt that the museum was not
really as devoted to issues of inclusion and diversity as
(02:59):
they might be paying lip service to the mission of
a museum is fundamentally twofold to educate the public about
art and to decide what art is good enough to
be saved in perpetuity. This is a nice way of
saying that part of what a museum does is decide
(03:19):
why some art is better than other art, why some
art is considered great, so great that it's worth the time, money,
and energy it takes to display, interpret, and save it.
Honest story made me realize how much DNA museums share
with courts of law. Both are institutions where the basic
(03:42):
rules were written centuries ago, and both have been historically
run by highly educated, affluent white men, experts who come
together to decide upon the merits of this, that or
the other piece of evidence. In museums, this work is
done by curators and the justices. It is done by
lawyers and judges. The rub is once a decision is made,
(04:08):
the exhibition opens or the verdict is read, the public
never sees what's been left out. The process itself of curating,
of adjudicating, of choosing this, but not that this is
also a process of silencing. We've all done this. There's
no way to tell a story without leaving something out.
(04:29):
We have done it with the story we are telling you.
The question is what are the ramifications of those omissions
or suppressions. In Animandietta's case, there were at least two
pockets of silence. There was the historical omission of art
(04:49):
made by women in museums, and there was the suppression
of crucial pieces of evidence in the trial. Both would
have an enormous effect on how her art was understood
and how people saw her death. I'm your Host Helen
Molesworth from Pushkin Industries, Something Else and Sony Music Entertainment.
(05:11):
This is Death of an Artist, Episode five. The silencing
the People versus Andrea stretched over two weeks during the
(05:32):
winter of nineteen eighty eight. Ironically, Anamandietta's first retrospective exhibition
at the New Museum was closing just as the trial began.
The show had been hastily thrown together by her supporters
and visitors to that show would have seen photographs of
her body pressed into the ground, photographs of her stone
(05:53):
carvings from Cuba, and her delicate drawings of primordial female forms.
At the trial, however, the defense painted a picture of
Anna that veered more towards caricature than reality. And I
remember they asked me these questions, like I guess they
were trying to establish that she killed herself, like if
this was some sort of like culminating art piece, that
(06:16):
she killed herself, which is ridiculous. The strategy started on
the very first day when Natalia Delgado took the stand.
When Carl's lawyer Jack Hoffinger questioned Natalia, he didn't ask
about Carl and Anna's relationship. He wanted to talk about
Anna's artwork. And they kept talking about impact body impacting
(06:37):
on the earth. And I could see how they could
try to make that argument, because she would like press
herself into the earth, or she would like cover her
withself with mud and stand against a tree. But thing
her work was about the human body and all sorts
of things in nature, and it was not at all
about impacting on the earth. Carl's lawyers insinuated that the
(06:58):
evidence for suicide was Anna's artwork. Hoffinger suggested that her
use of blood and earth were signs of an unconscious
death wish. Never mind. Anna's own explanation of why she
used blood again, read by artist Tanya Bugera. I started
immediately using blood, I guess because I think is a
(07:19):
very powerful, magical thing. I don't see it that's a
negative force. For Anna. Blood was a way to connect
art with everyday life. Blood was real and using it
was a way to make art with the stuff of
the world, the stuff of the body, not something fake
or pristine. Anna's friends in the courtroom, such as be
(07:43):
Ruby Rich, could see where it was all headed. It
was totally blamed the victim, but with an extra twist.
It was completely racist. It was constructing an idea of
this hot blooded latina who drank and misbehaved and quote
went out a window. It's starting to get ugly, and
it's all the uglier because it's such an old move.
(08:04):
If you're a defense lawyer defending a murder, you always
want to put the dead person on trial. You always
want to dirty up the victim as much as you can.
That's Ron Koubi again, the longtime defense lawyer who helped
us understand some parts of the trial. What he doesn't
say is that when you put the victim on trial,
(08:25):
the perpetrator gets to sit silent. And Jack Hoffinger was savvy,
a top notch criminal defense lawyer. His first line of
attack paint Anna as a drunk. The way that the
drinking played into the trial was disturbing. The drinking was
pinned on Anna and not pinned on Carl. How do
(08:47):
you explain that they were drinking all night together in
the same room, but her corpse gets the blood alcohol
test his living body evidently doesn't. Anna had a blood
alcohol level of zero point one eight, well above the
legal limit for driving. Notably, no evidence was submitted about
(09:08):
Carl's blood alcohol level. Hoffinger suggested that Anna was so
drunk she might have accidentally fallen out the window, a
theory that did not account for the significant height of
the window sill halfway up her body at least, and
her well known fear of heights, which her friend Marcia
Pelle's testified to. But seating doubt was the point. They
(09:33):
weren't trying to prove what happened, They were trying to
create reasonable doubt if she was drunk. It could have
been an accident, and if it wasn't an accident, then
maybe it was a suicide. Here's Lisa Phillips, currently director
of the New Museum, who attended the trial when she
was a curator at the Whitney. They used every single
(09:56):
stereotypical image they could dredge up as some indication that,
you know, hot blooded, tempestuous, that she would throw herself
out the window. I don't believe that she committed suicide,
that's for sure. The suicide theory was, for Anna's supporters,
completely bogus. It simply did not jibe with Anna's personality.
(10:22):
To further the suicide theory, Hoffinger also focused on Anna's
interest in the Afro Cuban religion Santaia. Remember what her
friend el Triano said about her, that she was not
a Santa that she was interested as a scholar, not
a practitioner. But Santaria was useful for Carl's case. There
(10:45):
are no witches in Santaria, but that didn't stop Carl's
lawyers from using the oldest play in the sexist handbook,
basically wonder out loud about whether or not she's a witch.
Carl's attorney, Hoffinger basically based his analysis of why she
might have commuted suicide on Sandvidia on voodoo, and this
(11:08):
was very, very disturbing. Huffinger knew Anna had named some
of her artworks after Afro Cuban deities, including one called
yema Yah. He asked one of her friends about her
interest in the deity. On the witness stand, the friends
said yem Yah is a deity that takes flight. She
(11:30):
was interested in researching it. And in a statement that
brought a hush over the courtroom, the witness said, yem
Yah takes flight on September seventh, and everyone knew that
Anna went out the window on September eighth. Eltriana was
horrified when she heard this testimony. I think he really
(11:51):
hit below the belt when he decided to speak about
ye my Yah, sort of saying that Anna had conceived
of her death, saying that she may have done this
in the context of her artwork. The reason Ella thinks
this is below the belt is not only is it wrong,
(12:14):
Yemaya does not take flight. She is a deity connected
to the ocean and is often imaged as a mermaid.
It's also highly disrespectful. Yemaya the goddess of motherhood and
the Ocean, is the highest ranking female deity in Santaria.
Implying that Anna's interest in Yemaya led to a death
(12:34):
wish is analogous to wondering if a woman who believes
in the Virgin Mary is responsible for her son's death
at the hands of others. Kokofusco, the artist and author
of Dangerous Moves performance in Politics in Cuba, was also
horrified when she heard what was unfolding in the courtroom.
(12:57):
I was having conversations with all these different people about
the trial, which was very dramatic. I personally did not
go to the trial. But what I remember that was
particularly upsetting to me was the utterly racist interpretation of
her work. This idea that somehow or other, because she
(13:17):
had really an anthropological interest in Afro Cuban religion, that
that automatically meant that she was some kind of crazy
person involved in voodoo. Because the Americans didn't differentiate at
the time between Santheia and Vulu, even though the roots
African roots of those two religions are entirely different, but
(13:39):
they were utilizing stereotypes about voodoo that come from Hollywood
musicals right about people losing their minds, and that was
not the relationship that Data had to Santania, which she
studied academically. It was unclear what the judge thought of
all this, and that mattered a great deal, as the
(14:00):
verdict rested solely on his opinion. But it was clearly
upsetting to Anna's friends. They believed in her as an artist.
She wasn't experimenting with voodoo or Santarilla. She was someone
on the cutting edge of performance in land art, making
gorgeous work about our relationship to the earth, to the land,
(14:21):
two ideas of home. She was interested in Stonehenge and
Egyptian pyramids and Native American rock carvings. Anna's supporters, even
Robert Katz, who attended every day of the trial, were
surprised that Karl was allowing Anna to be portrayed as
someone who was suicidal or crazy. Of course, for the lawyer,
(14:43):
it was a necessity. Here's what Hoffinger said to Robert Kats.
He did not encourage any any kind of denigration of
Anna in any way, shape or form. We did not
want that, and we did our best not to go
too far. Even though they'd tried not to go too far.
(15:04):
Anna's supporters clearly thought they'd sullied Anna's reputation. They'd implied
she was a drunk. They'd painted a picture of someone
who was unreasonable, hot headed and out of control, someone
who was troubled and caused trouble. And part of the
reason they were able to describe her this way is
precisely because there are no metaphorical mothers in art history,
(15:28):
no backdrop of women geniuses to connect her work to. Meanwhile,
Carl sat silent. Here's El Troiano again. The trial was insulting.
Watching Carl sitting there reading during the trial was insulting.
The day of closing arguments coincided with the opening day
(15:51):
of Carl's exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Madrid, a
soaring nineteenth century pavilion where white cast iron column defintely
hold up a roof and walls made out of glass.
The images of the exhibition online look gorgeous. We see
Andre's somber metal plates on the floor with all of
(16:11):
this light and air above them. It made me wonder
about how much of what I love about Carl's work
is that he broke the do not touch rule? Was
he able to break that rule because he thought the
rules didn't apply to him. I thought about how much
the art world values rule breakers, and I wondered, on
(16:32):
that last day of the trial if any of the
visitors in Madrid were thinking about Carl, who was waiting
in the courtroom to see what, if any, rules would
apply to him. On February eleventh, nineteen eighty eight, Judge
(16:57):
Lessinger had a verdict. The players assembled. There was Anna's
family and friends, a small press contingent, and Carl still
in his workers overalls alone except for his lawyers. When
the judge took his bench, the courtroom was silent. The
judge said, quote, I have concluded that the evidence has
(17:21):
not satisfied me beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant
is guilty. Carl Andre had been acquitted. As the courtroom emptied,
reporters gathered around Anna's family and listened as Anna's mother said,
I know he killed my daughter. Meanwhile, Carl and his
(17:44):
lawyer were also surrounded by reporters. Carl's only comment, justice
has been served. Carl's lawyer, Jack Hoffinger, later talked to
Robert Katz about the outcome. This was a very important
case because what it proved was that the system works
because that system, that trial pertects us against unfair accusations,
(18:06):
every one of us, You, me, everyone else. Carl shared
the news of his acquittal with his friends Saul and
Carol LeWitt. He said that justice has been done, I
said I regulations all. While a civil case requires a
(18:28):
preponderance of evidence, criminal trials demand an even higher form
of proof. Guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt.
This means no other plausible explanation can be gleaned from
the evidence that makes it to trial. Here's Ron Koubie,
(18:48):
the defense lawyer. Again, the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt.
The promise most people don't make decisions in their life
based on proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Basically, regular people
on a jury are used to making decisions based on
what they think makes the most sense, using the information
(19:11):
they have, whereas a judge is accustomed to using a
higher standard of not just reasonable, but beyond a reasonable doubt.
And so when you have somebody who the jury is
not gonna like, who already looks squirrely because of what
he perveys for a living, and who probably did it,
(19:35):
that person is probably going to be convicted again. Judges
tend to apply that beyond a reasonable doubt standard more
carefully in a case like this, they recognize this evidence
is circumstantial. Judges tend to be more meticulous about what
(19:55):
a reasonable doubt is. I for sure understand his point.
There's an ethical elegance to reasonable doubt and its presumptions
of innocence until proven guilty. My problem is I have
what I consider to be reasonable doubt about Carl Andre's
(20:15):
not guilty verdict. And one of the many reasons I'm
skeptical is because there is no official record that any
of this happened. When Carl was acquitted, his trial records
were permanently sealed. Not even the Freedom of Information Act
can open them. And we tried pretty hard to get
(20:36):
these records, but it turns out the only person who
can open them is Carl. This means all of the
evidence from the nine one one call to the polaroids
of the scratches is now gone from public view. All
of the case documents in the hands of the police,
the DA's office, and in the courts are unattainable to
(20:59):
lay people in any fashion whatsoever. Even their existence will
not be confirmed. This is how New York State protects
those found not guilty. I have a lot of trouble
accepting this. None of Carl's friends at the trial to
hear what might have happened. Carl never takes the stand
(21:19):
and never had to answer a single question publicly. Carl
would go more than two decades without saying anything publicly
about Anna. Silence was the play, and it worked. Carl
Andre is an extremely private person, as you may have guessed.
I mean, he doesn't want his photograph taken. You can
publicize his works, but you can't talk about his private
(21:41):
life with him. He won't talk to you about it.
I mean, that's a publication, if you know what I mean.
He might talk if your friends, but doesn't want the
world to be And one of the horrors of this
case is that to some extent, his life and her
life would publicize, which is not something he wanted to do.
That's Carl's lawyer, Jack Hoffer again. And it's certainly true
(22:02):
that Carl steered clear of the press for a very
long time. But when The New Yorker and the New
York Times came calling in advance of his big retrospective exhibition,
his opposition to discussing his private affairs did not hold.
He answered questions, he allowed his photo to be taken.
He even appeared in a short video made by the newspaper.
(22:25):
But I must say, as I have grown older, my
physical capacities have been very much reduced. So I used
to be able to sling those timbers around like nothing
at all, and I don't want to try nowadays. In
the years immediately following the verdict, Honest supporters spoke openly
about the investigation, the trial, and the acquittal. Friends and
(22:47):
family spoke to Robert Katz for his book Naked by
the Window, and his interviews, combined with the fact that
he had both seen the documents that were now sealed
and had attended every day of the trial, meant Katz
was the only person who knew the whole story, such
as it could be told. When the book came out
(23:08):
in nineteen ninety, there was a small flurry of press,
but even though his book was exhaustively researched, he and
a colleague together conducted more than two hundred interviews. I've
heard more than one art world insider referred to it
as quote but horrible book because it was written in
the language of journalism. Many people thought it was sensational
(23:32):
and unnuanced. He was an outsider who just didn't get it,
and being skeptical about the way the book was written
meant folks didn't have to grapple with its conclusions. And
then life went on. Carl spent time in Europe. He
continued to live in the same apartment, he remarried, he
(23:53):
showed at the same galleries. He still made art, and
his work continued to sell well. Number two seventeen is next.
This is the Carlandre nineteen prime rectile that's worked from
nineteen seventy seven, and it's opened this now at one
ten one twenty one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. So
while Carl's story might have made some folks uneasy as
(24:16):
a story, as a problem, it moved to the background.
There was less and less talk about what happened, and
eventually most of honest supporters stopped talking about Carl and
the trial too. It's like he's been scrubbed from the record.
They'd rather talk about her art in her life, they'd
rather secure her legacy, and they'd prefer to do so
(24:39):
in a context that doesn't include Carl, who can blame them,
even if oddly it contributes to the silence. It wasn't
until there was another extremely horrible and very public accusation
of espousal murder, but the conversation would be reignited. We
(25:00):
the jury and the aboved entitle action find the defendant
Ornhal Jane Simpson not guilty of the crime of murder.
Across the nation and around the world, virtually everyone watched
as judgment day came swiftly for OJ Simpson. Remember the
Gorilla Girls, the anonymous group of feminist artists dedicated to
(25:21):
calling out the sexism of the art world. The O. J.
Simpson acquittal inspired them to make another poster, so we thought, well,
let's bring this up again, because it really was a
related situation. It was clear that something went on between
Carl Andrea Anamantia and she ended up dead and O J.
(25:42):
Two and both of them got off the hook. That's
one of the Gorilla Girls. They made a poster in
nineteen ninety five that placed a snapshot of Carl in
profile next to a head shot of one of the
most famous and celebrated athletes in the world. O. J.
Simpson reasoned across the top was the question what do
(26:03):
these men have in common? What do these men have
in common? Every fifteen seconds, another woman as assaulted by
her husband or boyfriend. Some of these assaults end in murder.
Usually there are no eyewitnesses to these crimes. Unlike their
other posters, there was no humor, no sly commentary, nothing
(26:23):
to ameliorate the pain. There was something very stark about
seeing Carl's face right next to OJ's, but comparison was undeniable,
and it seemed to puncture any exceptionalism the art world
was banking on for itself. These would have gone up
around Soho and in the East Village, where there were
(26:43):
a lot of artists living and a lot of fledgling galleries.
The Guerrilla Girls were directly linking Anna's death to the
increasing awareness of domestic violence, an issue that had just
begun to be part of a public conversation. The Oj
simpsonral was on TV all the time, and the story
(27:04):
of domestic violence and domestic violence homicides went from the
back page to the front page. This is Este Solare,
one of the women behind the nineteen ninety four Violence
Against Women Act, the first bill to fully address domestic violence.
She worked the halls of Congress hard in the nineteen
eighties and had to endure one congressman calling it the
(27:25):
quote take fun out of Marriage Act. And people started
really talking about the fact that so many other women
were victims of domestic violence, and people were given license
to come out and talk about it more as well,
because it was such a public narrative. Before, oj Esta
practically had to beg newspapers and news outlets to write
(27:47):
about domestic violence. Now her phone was ringing off the hook.
It was absolutely clear he was guilty. The court said
he was innocent, and I've spent a lot of time
with Nicole's family and they don't think he's innocent at all.
Whatever the court said, the trial nevertheless put domestic violence
(28:10):
and spousal homicide front and center. The trial and the
story was transformative in terms of how the US warhold
really saw the issue of domestic violence again. It really
took on, Oh my god, this is really a serious problem.
(28:33):
It was a turning point. The issue went from the
privacy to the public sphere pretty dramatically. The Gorilla Girls
suggested that on a story wasn't merely a unique instance
depending on how you saw it of a drunken accident, suicide,
or an argument gone wrong. Honest story was part of
(28:53):
a much larger social problem. More than ninety percent of
women who are murdered are killed by when they know
the perpetrators are often their husbands, boyfriends, or exes. But
the awareness of domestic violence as an issue was just
starting to be named as a problem when Anna died.
Early on and the eighties and the late seventies, women
(29:17):
were being beaten and battered and most people didn't know
about it. It was private, it was silent, it was hidden,
and more than that, more than that, they were often
blamed for what happened to them. So it was a
combination of feeling invisible and also responsible. Before Nicole Brown
(29:41):
Simpson's death made domestic violence visible, it was typically considered
a private matter, and because it was private, it was
not to be spoken about publicly. This silence almost always
benefited the aggressor rather than the victim, and while Oj
wasn't convicted because of this visibility, he suffered consequences, Carl
(30:03):
did not. He lost his endorsements, his television and movie
appearances evaporated. He was effectively shunned. The art world took
no such extra judicial measures. If you look at Carl's resume,
easily available on his personal website, you'll find that he
has exhibited often multiple times, every single year since nineteen
(30:29):
eighty five. His shows were reviewed in the New York Times,
and then in twenty eleven he landed a coveted profile
in The New Yorker. It felt like an attempt to
revise his reputation before he got the biggest feather in
any artist's cap a major museum retrospective. And it was
(30:51):
in the New Yorker profile where he finally broke his
silence and offered the following version of what happened that night.
Here's what he said, read by a voice actor. I
was asleep. I was in bed, and when I heard
cries of no, no, no, it had been quite balmy,
like eighty degrees, and the temperature went down to about
(31:14):
sixty All of a sudden, what Anna did was to
get up and start closing the windows because cold air
was blowing in. Anna had to climb up. She was
barely five feet. To close those windows, you had to
do it from the middle so they wouldn't jam, and
(31:35):
in trying to close those windows, she just lost her balance.
This is Carl's a fourth version of what happened, and
it's entirely different from the previous versions. Is it really
any wonder that so many people still don't believe him?
An artist named Elise Rasmussen even researched the story and
(31:59):
check the weather for September eighth, nineteen eighty five, No
big temperature drop occurred. Was the power structure of the
art world really deaf to the protests of so many women?
Did white men hold so much power that they can
continually change their story and still expect everyone to take
(32:20):
their word for it. Did Carl's calling it an accident
after twenty years somehow make the art world think that
it was outside of or above the problem of domestic violence?
Did we think we were that different from everyone else? Yeah,
(32:52):
so you have an inda, I do okay. Doctor Kelly
Morgan is a scholar turned curator who also had a
dramatic departure from her job. I wanted to talk to
her because she and I had pretty much opposite instincts
about how to handle things. When it all went down
(33:14):
for me in twenty eighteen, My first instinct was silence,
and that was pretty much the only thing me and
the museum agreed upon. Hence the NDA, which for those
listeners without one, is a non disclosure agreement. Another method
of procuring silence. What do you think breaking your silence
(33:35):
would mean having the power that you have in the
field and the reverence that you have in the field.
Part of my silence in the wake of being fired
was I didn't know how to actually tell the story.
And part of it is fear that people would come
(34:01):
at me in a variety of ways, financial or reputational.
My first worry was money, how would I pay my bills?
As for the reputational stuff, I knew what could happen
to strong willed women in the press. Kelly also felt
the fear, but silence was not her play. I asked
(34:24):
her to tell me what happened that led up to
her dramatic exit from the Newfield's Museum in Indiana. It
was a lot of things, but the tipping point came
at an acquisitions meeting, the meeting during which the curators
present works of art that they think are good enough
to display and save. In these meetings, curators typically make
(34:45):
a deeply researched presentation on the artist's work to a
committee of collectors and philanthropists whose job it is is
to provide the funds for the purchase. So we get
to this meeting. The vase has Colin Kaepernick on one side,
John Brown on the other side. Is called the Expulsion
of Colin Kaepernick, and we're discussing it, and we has
(35:07):
a very like a high level donor, and he just
goes on this rant about, you know, Colin Kaepernick was
wrong and African Americans don't use their money correctly, and
just like all of the races, neoliberal capitalist bullshit. So
I get up and walk out of the room. And
then the subsequent response, you know, from leadership, because he
(35:29):
was such a high level donor, was that I had
just acted unprofessionally. In two decades of museum work, I
have never seen a curator walk out of a meeting
with trustees. I can't lie. I kind of wish I
had been there to watch Kelly's rebellion. Ultimately, she decided
that walking out wasn't enough, so she wrote an essay
(35:51):
about racism in art museums. The essay pretty much discusses
the nature of white supremacy culture as I've experienced and
sit in art museums and then before she could get fired,
she sent her boss, as well as all of her
colleagues and the local press, a scathing resignation letter that
(36:13):
called out the racism she'd been experiencing on the daily.
I went to the press because I was just kind
of sick and tired, you know, of how bad things
were going. And it was something that happens to all
museum professionals to some degree, whether it's class discrimination, gender discrimination,
(36:36):
racial sexual discrimination. There's a history, there's a tradition, and
I kept thinking that eventually I would get some like
Ceason desist letter. She never did get a season desist,
but what did come was a barrage of casual slander
and some very real death threats. And there's a very
prominent arts leader who has no problem, you know, telling anybody,
(37:02):
like at a party or a dinner or like you know,
on a zoom call or whatever, that he feels like
I desire to be shout at a vase, and that
his several people call, let's say, are you aware you
know that this person is like saying this stuff for us?
And yeah, I know. I envy Kelly's courage and ability
(37:24):
to speak freely about her experience, though it pains me
deeply that she has such stories to tell. We all
know that speaking up has real consequences. It's why so
many victims of domestic violence stay quiet. It's why the
Gorilla Girls are anonymous. But there's a difference between those
who are silenced and those who choose to stay silent.
(37:47):
And by now it's clear that the silence that calls
me the most is carl Andres. He didn't take the stand,
He didn't provide an explanation to honest family or her friends.
He had no words for the community. He was such
a prominent member of a community torn apart by what happened.
(38:08):
The records of the trial were permanently sealed, and according
to Robert Catz, the strategy was to maintain this silence
moving forward toward the end of Naked by the Window.
He wrote quote. Sometime after the trial, a meeting was
held to the Paula. Cooper Gallery, where it was decided
that no one among the participants would ever again speak
(38:31):
of the case. So, in a last ditch effort to
see if we could crack the wall of silence, my
producer suggested we go to Carl Andre's apartment to see
if he'd talked to us face to face. It's a
huge building and it's about fifteen floors higher than any
other building. Yes, it's around much taller than it's neighbors.
(38:54):
It's really disturbing how high it is. All right, revolving
door here, We got hi? How are you? That's next
time on Death of an Artist. Death of an Artist
(39:15):
is a co production between Pushkin Industries, Something Else and
Sony Music Entertainment. Written and hosted by me Helen Muldsworth.
Executive producers are Lizzie Jacobs, Tom kinig Leetel Mulad, Jacob
Weisberg and Lucas Werner. Produced by Maria Luisa Tucker, editing
by Lizzie Jacobs. Our managing producer is Jacob Smith. Associate
(39:37):
producers are Pooge Rue and Eloise Linton. Additional production helped
by Tally Abacassas. Voice acting by Nick Barrain. Anna Mendieta's
quotes were read by Tanya Brigera, engineered by Sam Bare,
fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. Our theme song is
by Pooge Rue. If you love this show, consider subscribing
(40:04):
to Pushkin Plus to listen early add free and get
exclusive bonus content. Look for the Pushkin Plus channel on
Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm. Find more great
podcasts from Sonymusic Entertainment at sonymusic dot com. Backslash Podcasts
Host
Helen Molesworth
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