Does anyone remember the Saturday Night Live skit where someone jokingly says they want to kill the president? And then – bam! – a gaggle of men in dark suits charge into the room within seconds and grab the guy? That skit reminds me of this artist’s situation, which was reported by the NY Times online blog today.
Located directly across the street from the NY Times office, an artist rented an empty storefront for two days only and then stencilled “The Assassination of Hiliary Clinton” and below that “The Assassination of Barrack Obama” on the large, store-front windows. Is this anything more than an obvious and kind of annoying art publicity stunt? The artist deliberately chose a spot directly across from a major news agency. However, the dramatic law enforcement reaction to these words is rather drastic and is definitely censorship, which was, last time I checked, illegal. Check it out for yourself. The Times article is below.
This morning, a Boston-born performance artist, Yazmany Arboleda, tried to set up a provocative art exhibition in a vacant storefront on West 40th Street in Midtown Manhattan with the title, “The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama,” in neatly stenciled letters on the plate glass windows at street level.
By 9:30 a.m., New York City police detectives and Secret Service agents had shut down the exhibition, and building workers had quickly covered over the inflammatory title with large sheets of brown paper and blue masking tape. The gallery is across the street from the southern entrance to The New York Times building.
To read the entire article in the NY Times, click here.
