TONIGHT, NCAC and The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School have invited several prominent visual artists to participate in a discussion about visual expression that provokes controversy today. Some of these artists are associated with the culture wars of the 90’s, others were more recently censored during the War on Terrorism. Have attitudes towards representations of nudity and sexuality changed since the 1990s culture wars? Are religious topics still as inflammatory? What is considered offensive or inappropriate under our current political climate?

A discussion on controversial and banned art:

Wednesday, September 22, 2010 – 6:30 to 8:30 pm
The New School, Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12 Street, New York
FREE ADMISSION, general seating.

Participants include:

  • Wafaa Bilal, Iraqi American artist, whose installation Virtual Jihadi was closed down by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York;
  • Holly Hughes, performance artist, one of the NEA4;
  • Trevor Paglen, social scientist, artist, writer and provocateur;
  • Carolee Schneemann, pioneering feminist filmmaker and visual artist who has battled censorship for the last fifty years.
  • Moderated by Laura Flanders of GritTV

The panel is part of a series of events on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Congressional decision to require the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to consider “general standards of decency and respect” in awarding grants.

For more information about the program, please visit How Obscene Is This!.