Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts Vandalized. Law Enforcement Officials Are Deeming the Attacks ‘Hate Crimes’
October 24, 2007
The Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation (TASF) has reported a series of attacks at the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts, 5616 Memorial Drive, Stone Mountain, Georgia.
The first incident occurred in the early hours of Saturday, October 20th, when vandals defaced the building as well as tying a noose around the neck of the bronze statue of Tupac Shakur located in the Center’s Peace Garden. The attacks are being investigated as hate crimes by the De Kalb County Sheriff’s Office. The second incident occurred at the Center at 2:00 AM Monday morning when the statue was damaged further.
Source:PR Newswire
Posted in Racism, Black, Hip Hop
Comments (0)Tallahassee art exhbit fuels Confederate flag controversy
March 21, 2007
An art exhibit at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art Science, here in Tallahassee, is stirring quite a bit of controversy.
Bob Hurst walked into a Tallahassee art museum this week and saw the symbol of his Southern heritage hanging by a noose.
The Artwork, which has led to a standoff between descendants of Confederate soldiers and the museum, is a life-size gallows with the Confederate flag dangling from a noose. Created by a black artist from Detroit and titled “The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag,” the piece has brought an old debate to Florida anew.
One of a dozen displays of Confederate flag art by political artist John Sims, it’s part of an exhibit entitled AfroProvocations at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science that opened as part of Black History Month in February.”
The display also includes Confederate flags arranged in a cross, a Confederate flag displayed above a voting machine and a restaging of Grant Wood’s iconic American Gothic that shows a grim-faced Sims, arms crossed, standing next to a noose with the flag behind him.
Isn’t it the duty of art to create controversy and spark debate? Isn’t art’s mission to outrage and enlighten it’s audience. So why would we ever stifle that?
What say you?
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