Ms. Fischman,
You have utterly ignored the substance of the petitioners' text. I wonder how you would feel if someone pushed a traumatic experience into your face and then deliberately acted oblivious to your discomfort.
Dear all,
Thank you for your engagement and for your thoughtful response to Tony Matelli's Sleepwalker, which was installed this afternoon on the Wellesley campus.
Art has an extraordinary power to evoke personal response, and to elicit the unexpected. We placed the Sleepwalker on the roadside just beyond the Davis to connect the exhibition -- within the museum -- to the campus world beyond. I love the idea of art escaping the museum and muddling the line between what we expect to be inside (art) and what we expect to be outside (life). I watched from the 5th floor windows today (intermittently, over several hours) as students stopped to interact playfully with the sculpture. They took selfies with him, snapping pics with their phones, and gathering to look at this new figure on the Wellesley landscape -- even as the snow fell.
Matelli's Sleepwalker -- considered up close -- is a man in deep sleep. Arms outstretched, eyes closed, he appears vulnerable and unaware against the snowy backdrop of the space around him. He is not naked. He is profoundly passive. He is inert, as sculpture. But he does inspire narrative. He appears to have drifted away from wherever he belongs and one wonder why; one wonders also how he has gotten so lost, so off course. He is a figure of pathos, and one that warrants measured consideration. Perhaps he carries metaphorical weight.
Art provokes dialogue, and discourse is the core of education. In that spirit, I am enormously glad to have your response.
Respectfully yours,
Lisa Fischman
Ruth Gordon Shapiro '37 Director
Davis Museum at Wellesley College
Ms. Fischman,
You have utterly ignored the substance of the petitioners' text. I wonder how you would feel if someone pushed a traumatic experience into your face and then deliberately acted oblivious to your discomfort.
I can't help but laugh at the moronic comments below. You women that find this offensive or disgusting need to grow up. Fast. Your pathetic whining isn't going to get you very far at all in life. If this is what your women's studies classes are teaching you then it's no wonder they are the laughing stock of the accedamic world.
Nancy Shaver...Your level of superiority and condescension is pathetic and small. The students at Wellesley who have raised objections to this "art" have very real concerns. They also are very active in other world issues. How long has it been since you have been on campus and interacted with any current students? It is very convenient that you can look into your crystal ball and pass judgment on young women who you have never met.
"(Of course, it's written in Latin, which you may not understand.)" I have two bachelors degrees, two masters degrees, was a National Merit Scholar and co-Valedictorian and I did not study Latin. I would NOT want to match wits with many of the current students on Wellesley's campus. The use of this type of 'attack' shows that you have no valid argument. The fact remains that CURRENT Wellesley students are deeply troubled by the site of this 'art' on a daily basis and it is negatively affecting their lives. What part of that is unclear to you? I'll try to elaborate if you are having difficulty comprehending the basics.
Thanks for providing some great material for my Forbes column. You might find it interesting.
Art, Free Speech, Hypocrisy, Tightie-Whities, and Teenage Tantrums
Welcome to the culture war’s latest opera buffa courtesy of Wellesley College and a lifelike statue of a wimpy middle-aged man sleepwalking in his underpants.
As a member of the Class of 1968 I would suggest that all of you consider "getting a life". This is art (and you may want to spend some time familiarizing yourself with what art is--and maybe visit a few contemporary art galleries). In my time on campus, our petitions had to do with opposing the war in Vietnam, among other matters of genuine gravity. You may want to revisit the College motto--"Not to be ministered to, but to minister". (Of course, it's written in Latin, which you may not understand.)
Dear all,
I was seriously amazed by some of the comments concerning the statue, such as that we are going to Wellesley because we want to hide from creepy boys or that the statue is actually sexist. First of all, I thought Wellesley was about empowering women, not keeping them away from men. I realize that some students may prefer to not interact with men as much, but it's ridiculous to claim that we allow male dominance in some way just because we have a male statue. As a friend of mine very correctly pointed out, would the community react this way if it was a naked woman? I have heard over and over again students exclaiming "love your body". Here. A naked body for everyone to admire. Just because it is a male body does this make it "disgusting", as one of the comments mentioned? I completely understand and respect that some sexual assault victims on campus may find this triggering but the rest of arguments have absolutely no basis. The statue has achieved its goal: the whole campus is talking about art - what is good art, whether art should be provoking, nudity in art etc. And there is definitely a lot of value in that.
Reading this letter and the comments, I find what a student mentioned in one of my classes to be very true: "In Wellesley you somehow have a position of power if you are the most offended person in the room".
Fani
Dear Ms. Fischman,
You are correct - art does have the power to evoke personal response and to elicit the unexpected. But as a Wellesley student, I have had the opportunity to gauge student responses to Matelli's "Sleepwalker" through interpersonal discussions - not from a faraway 5th-floor window - and I can report that the responses that this statue is invoking are largely ones of discomfort, anxiety, shock and disgust.
However, what disturbs me most is the response that most students are having, and can be best labeled as "grudging acceptance". Students are clearly unhappy with this installation. They find the statue creepy and unsettling and don't relish the thought of having to walk past it each day - some students are even going so far as to plan alternate routes to "get out of the statue's way." (dir. quote) But, many students are already forcing themselves to "get used to it" (dir. quote) and to accept it as a situation that they do not have control over and are powerless to. This is an emotion that is all too familiar in the real world for many people, and I am shocked that this kind of scenario is being willfully replicated right on Wellesley's campus. Our safe space - the only safe space for some of us - is being heavily compromised, and the fact that you are choosing to defend the statue before considering students' comfort-levels is a shame.
I would like to respond to your suggestion that Sleepwalker is "a figure of pathos" who "warrants measured consideration" with this: Do you not think that, as a member of the Wellesley community yourself, that it is best to make the consideration of our students and our siblings a bigger priority? And does the discomfort of our student body not elicit pathos in you?
You're also right in suggesting that "Sleepwalker" appears to have drifted away from wherever he belongs, and I agree with you. Wherever he does belong, it is not on Wellesley's campus.
Finally, you say that "one wonders how [Sleepwalker] has gotten so lost, so off course". With all due respect, I could pose the same thought with regards to the administration's decision to put up such a triggering statue without student consent.
I applaud Ms. Magid for creating this petition and for jumpstarting this dialogue, and I implore you to please take the students' comfort (or lack thereof) into consideration when deciding how to move forward.
The people complaining about this statue are probably completely oblivious to the irony of the fact that they are attempting to stifle artistic expression free speech at a LIBERAL ARTS school… Granted, these rights aren’t guaranteed on a private campus… But this notion that an inanimate statue could be “harmful”, or a “trigger” to victims of sexual abuse is absurd and asinine, and I think it makes a mockery of people who have been sexually assaulted by, you know, a REAL person.
Besides that… Why are these women so uncomfortable with a man in his underwear? Why do they automatically associate a man in his underwear with “sexual assault”? How can one not see that view as highly offensive and prejudiced? Why all the misplaced hatred for men? (I know… Stupid question, right?)
For a ‘liberal arts’ school, these folks sure do seem to be a bunch of overly sensitive prudes with a lot of bottled up anger toward anything male. To these women I propose: Imagine if some man asked you to cover up your body… Imagine if a nude female statue was being protested as “too sexual”, and that a primarily male audience was demanding it’s removal for those reasons (You know, like in staunchly Muslim countries). Imagine what your outrage would be at such a proposition.
Get over yourselves. You ladies sound like my grandma.
Ms. Fischman,
Matelli's statue does not speak to the power of art to inspire dialogue but rather to the power of the nearly nude, white, male body to disturb and discomfit. Even unconscious and vulnerable, he is threatening. "Arms outstretched, eyes closed," he lumbers forward, quite literally unable to acknowledge the presence of his (in this context) largely female spectators. What a perfect representation of the world outside of Wellesley, where women and people identifying as women are often subject to a similar ambivalence. "I'm not even conscious that I'm wandering through your lady landscape," the statue says. "I do not have to experience you. I feel about you the same way I feel about the snow. But you have to experience me, and I don't care."
What does this statue do if not remind us of the fact of male privilege every single time we pass it, every single time we think about it, every single time we are forced to acknowledge its presence. As if we need any more reminders.
"Interact[ing] playfully with the statue" is a way of asserting what little control we have over it. By dressing it up, we are moving it away, even a little bit, from realism. A realism which, for me, is reminiscent of countless uncles laughing while I squirmed away from their drunken hugs and kisses during every Christmas and family party that I can't forget. Many of them bear a passing resemblance to the Sleepwalker. A realism which for others might mean the 2008 Fondler or any number of triggering experiences..
I believe art is nothing without empathy. I believe the creation of art should be an assertion, not a denouncement, of our humanity. Your analysis of the statue renders it as an abstraction--just some man wandering through an odd place. Let's call a spade a spade. He is not an abstraction. He is deliberate. He is installed. A willful ignorance of the implications of this very concrete statue only undermine your argument for it.
Maggie
According to my observations on the petition webpage and on facebook, the two main reasons for the petition are that people find it sexist/racist and threatening/triggering. I wholeheartedly agree that form and context matter. However, for me--one of the members of the Wellesley Community--I do not think that the statue is in any way a celebration of either masculinity or whiteness. In addition, the statue looks more vulnerable to me than anything. In itself, the statue represents all but male domination and just because it is placed on Wellesley's campus does not make it dominating. After all, Wellesley is a safe space for women for the ultimate goal of empowering them. So, perhaps it would be a good idea to discuss why a sculpture of an almost naked, middle-aged, disoriented and weak male body is in itself threatening, even if it is located on a Women's College campus. Would we be less freaked out, if it were the same statue of a woman's body?
That said, I do sympathize with and understand reactions from people who might have to remember past harassment experience(s) when confronted with the statue. I agree with Fani Ntavelou-Baum that the latter argument has actual basis to it, in comparison to others.
However, I find the immediate rejection and the attempt to speak for the whole community instead of opening up a space for the dialogue quite problematic. The artist is having a talk tomorrow at the Davis, so I hope that many people will attend it.