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American Morning

Controversial Art Exhibition on Holocaust Opens in New York City

Aired March 19, 2002 - 07:53   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so you might say is art. That's particularly true for a controversial art exhibition on the Holocaust that opened in New York City this week.

CNN's Maria Hinojosa has a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It starts out innocuous, a black-and-white watercolor of a boy, except that boy turns out to be Hitler, a box of Manischewitz Matzo, all shiny and new, but there is a gun inside, and familiar Lego blocks for a model concentration camp, a Nazi soldier, a brutal beating.

Conceptual art from of all places the Jewish Museum in New York. The title of the show: "Mirroring Evil."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We know this work is challenging. It's deliberately challenging. It's deliberately provocative. The idea is the artist wants you to think.

HINOJOSA: To think, says the curator, about how evil is just below the surface of our modern society. To think about how great actors have all taken turns interpreting great military power, Nazi commanders.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan, Yul Brenner, David Niven.

HINOJOSA: Norman Clayblack (ph) is the curator who wants his audience to ponder these questions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who can speak for the Holocaust? Can only survivors speak for the Holocaust? And what happens when a younger generation of individuals learns about the Nazi era and the Holocaust more from the media than they do from serious educational initiatives?

HINOJOSA: What has happened in New York as people have seen gas cans with designer labels, they have taken to the streets.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The museum has been intellectually dishonest. They are intellectual snobs. They know better than everyone else. You know, none of us get it. Only they get it. The art critics don't get it either. No one gets it except for them.

HINOJOSA: But there is no monolithic Jewish community, not one voice that responds to this kind of art unilaterally, not one way to see history or memory.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Memory in Judaism is not dynamic, not static, a profusion of many voices rather than a monopoly of one.

HINOJOSA; But for the ones who lived through the horror, the exhibit brings them a monopoly of pain.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is not a First Amendment issue. The Jewish Museum has every right to show whatever it want, but this is a matter of judgment and sensitivity to the pain this exhibit causes to the survivors of the Holocaust, who did not anticipate having their experiences and their suffering trivialized.

HINOJOSA: Or who simply could never imagine that their very real lives could become the stuff of conceptual art.

Maria Hinojosa, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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