Art Censorship

I visited the Santa Barbara Museum of Art yesterday to see the new photographic exhibition and had the surreal experience of walking through empty, white-walled rooms where the show Three American Artists was meant to be hung.

The emptiness brought me both sadness and a disquieting reminder of the power and danger of censorship. We were surely all entitled to see the works of renowned American artists that had been prepared for this show.

If you go to the museum, I suggest you regard the empty halls as an exhibition in itself. Wall plaques should explain clearly and truthfully why those paintings were never hung.