March 21, 2017

Viewpoint neutral — a sign in the UW Memorial Union seeking art for a show about Trump's "First 100 Days."

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Here's the website. You don't have to be a student (but you do have to be in the Madison area) to be in this show. Quite properly, the group putting on the show — The Wisconsin Union Directorate Art Committee — is not dictating a viewpoint. It says:
Are you angry, satisfied, scared, ashamed, proud, disturbed, or something else entirely? What has Trump accomplished within his first 100 days and how will you evaluate his time in the White House?... Artists from all political backgrounds are welcomed and encouraged to submit a work for consideration.....
The "first 100 days" limitation seems to exclude the idea of just painting Trump's face (and hair). You can do that and express either pride and satisfaction or fear and rage, but that wouldn't be sufficiently specific to the first 100 days. But I think it you just really George-W-Bushed the hell out of a colorful painting of Trump's head, you'd get in — first 100 days be damned.

But I'm not part of the The Wisconsin Union Directorate Art Committee and have no idea how they will judge this thing. The Wisconsin Union Directorate is "the student programming and leadership board for the Wisconsin Union." And its student-run art committee is "dedicated to bringing novel and challenging exhibitions to the Wisconsin Union."

I sure hope there is some pro-Trump material in the show, because that would be challenging.

83 comments:

LYNNDH said...

HA! Pro Trump? I have a bridge I can sell you in SF.

buwaya said...

The obvious one is a takeoff of a frame from a Godzilla movie, a Trump-monster versus a mecha-leviathan.

damikesc said...

I am actually impressed at how neutrally the exhibition was advertised there. I wasn't sure they could avoid pimping for negative ones, but they did as good a job as humanly possible. Good job.

That being said, if any positive ones are there, I'll be stunned.

Skipper said...

Will submissions be eligible for grants from the National Endowment for the Arts?

Owen said...

Submissions are due April 1.

I rest my case.

Meade said...

I'll be there, wearing my Badgers 2017 NCAA Champions shirt and Make America Great Again hat.

Ann Althouse said...

"I am actually impressed at how neutrally the exhibition was advertised there. I wasn't sure they could avoid pimping for negative ones, but they did as good a job as humanly possible. Good job."

I agree. It's also aesthetically a very nice poster.

rhhardin said...

Pussy-grabbing the pleased personalized nation would be positive.

Levi Starks said...

Oh I'm sure there'll be some positive works, they'll be positively dripping with satire.

DanTheMan said...

Will both Republicans in Madison be voting on the posters?

Curious George said...

"Meade said...
I'll be there, wearing my Badgers 2017 NCAA Champions shirt and Make America Great Again hat."


The only place you'll find the former is in Africa.

Althouse said "its student-run art committee is "dedicated to bringing novel and challenging exhibitions to the Wisconsin Union."

I sure hope there is some pro-Trump material in the show, because that would be challenging."


Novel, too!

rehajm said...

...and have no idea how they will judge this thing

I'm guessing a very one sided safe space vs. free expression Thunderdome!!!

BarrySanders20 said...

AA Says: "I agree. It's also aesthetically a very nice poster."

Compare and contrast the Trump profile art to the profile photo of the host.

Big Mike said...

Is Gary Trudeau going to sue over the announcement stealing his silhouette of Trump?

It's Madison; there will be NO pro-Trump entries.

cubanbob said...

Owen said...
Submissions are due April 1.

I rest my case."

Who said Communists are devoid of humor?

Pianoman said...

Remember the Obama "First 100 Days" show?

Remember the Clinton "First 100 Days" show?

Me neither.

For some reason, the "viewpoint-neutral artists" need to hyper-analyze everything Trump does though.

Unknown said...

I recall my first experience with tolerant liberalism. I along with a co-author and a bunch of others were invited to contribute articles to a certain Big Law School Law Review symposium issue. It was supposed to be a scholarly debate on same sex marriage; with several of us contributing articles pro or con.

So my co-author and I wrote our article and submitted it. Suddenly came the news: every single article opposing same sex marriage was summarily dropped, and the Issue would only advocate the pro-same sex marriage position.

Thus I learned my lesson about liberal "tolerance." I imagine this art show will be the same: titularly open to all views, but only the anti-Trump views will be exhibited. What else would a tolerant bunch of liberals do but make sure to silence opposing voices?

--Vance

Bill said...

The one pro-Trump entry will be defaced in a valiant act of #resistance.

rehajm said...

The Trump pattern on that poster would make lovely gift wrap!

M Jordan said...

"Are you angry, satisfied, scared, ashamed, proud, disturbed ..."

Let's analyze these adjectives on a positive/negative continuum.

Angry. 100 negative
Satisfied: 80 positive
Scared: 90 negative
Ashamed: 95 negative
Proud: 95 positive
Disturbed: 85 negative

Average: -39

This is neutrality in a liberal mindset. I'm sure many who read these five adjectives will be outraged by how positive it is.

rehajm said...

The one pro-Trump entry will be defaced in a valiant act of #resistance

A performance piece.

harrogate said...

The aversion to politics & drift away from politics continue apace.

Achilles said...

The first original artist to throw a nazi stache on a trump picture will win.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Althouse said...
I sure hope there is some pro-Trump material in the show, because that would be challenging.


Remind me why Althouse lives in a college town when she could live in an Appalachian town where every single entry would be pro-Trump.

Achilles said...

Blogger buwaya said...
"The obvious one is a takeoff of a frame from a Godzilla movie, a Trump-monster versus a mecha-leviathan."

I was thinking a takeoff of the los deplorebles shirt with Trump leading a group including drillers miners mechanics etc pushing a bunch of lawyers lobbyists reporters out of DC and back into the Atlantic.

Paddy O said...

"Remind me why Althouse lives in a college town when she could live in an Appalachian town where every single entry would be pro-Trump."

You've been here long enough so you should know that if it were Althouse of Appalachia, she would be highlighting and asking about anti-Trump ideas.

It's precisely because she's in Madison that she highlights what she does here. Going along with the crowd isn't very interesting.

Ann Althouse said...

The most obvious image woukd be of Muslims being excluded. Problem: how to draw the so you don't seem to be using stereotypes. Corniest approach: one sad woman in Muslim garb encountering a closed door.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Paddy O said...
You've been here long enough so you should know that if it were Althouse of Appalachia, she would be highlighting and asking about anti-Trump ideas.

It's precisely because she's in Madison that she highlights what she does here. Going along with the crowd isn't very interesting.


I think we should put this assumption to a rigorously neutral test. I hear property values are depressed in much of the Appalachia.

William said...

I don't have sufficient imagination to envision a pro Trump poster, and neither do the artists in Madison. I think it will be like SNL where the competition was to impersonate Trump in the most hurtful and malicious way possible. That's why Baldwin won out. His was the most hateful.

Richard Dolan said...

Trump was inaugurated 60 days ago. If submissions are due April 1, that will bring it up to about 70 days. So how can this exhibit cover the first 100 days?

Obama thought he could lower the seas and calm the waves. Trump tops that - he makes time fly.

Are we having fun yet? Trump seems like he is.

Ann Althouse said...

Obvious idea already much-used on the inernet: http://www.boredpanda.com/trump-executive-order-memes/

Achilles said...

Ann Althouse said...
Obvious idea already much-used on the inernet: http://www.boredpanda.com/trump-executive-order-memes/

Are those the best 5? That was a serious let down.

Achilles said...

Ann Althouse said...
The most obvious image woukd be of Muslims being excluded. Problem: how to draw the so you don't seem to be using stereotypes. Corniest approach: one sad woman in Muslim garb encountering a closed door.

Before or after she performs a clitoridectomy on her own daughter?

Tank said...

I see this as an opportunity for Althouse the artist to submit a suitably inscrutable, ambiguous entry. Wouldn't that really be the best kind, artwise?

Gahrie said...

one sad woman in Muslim garb encountering a closed door.

By "Muslim garb"...do you mean wearing a bomb vest?

Paddy O said...

"The most obvious image would be of Muslims being excluded"

The most likely is a room full of liberal, white, privileged, areligious folks staring at art together.

FullMoon said...

LYNNDH said... [hush]​[hide comment]

HA! Pro Trump? I have a bridge I can sell you in SF.


If you are talking about old Bay Bridge, forget it. I already bought it off a guy on Craigslist. Gonna sell it to China for scrap metal

Kurt Bermuda said...

I already submitted my "art" propaganda. It's a poster of a $1000 bill with the words "The value of my portfolio went up 21% during Trump's first 100 days and my wife got a promotion" superimposed over the bill.

buwaya said...

"Remind me why Althouse lives in a college town when she could live in an Appalachian town where every single entry would be pro-Trump."

Almost any college town anywhere would be anti-Trump, or at any rate the powers that be in the college proper.

tcrosse said...

How come the US version of a muslim refugree is a beautiful woman in a head scarf, while what they get in Europe is a swarthy guy with a mustache and a unibrow ? This must prompt some Germans or Swedes to ask, where are all those beautiful women that Trump is shutting out ?

Darrell said...

Half the first drafts involved shitting on a sidewalk. I fear that guess is low, though.

Known Unknown said...

Since it's Wisconsin, I'm hoping for a cheese-themed entry with MAKE AMERICA GRATE AGAIN on it.

If that does not appear, I will be disappoint.

Rusty said...

"I sure hope there is some pro-Trump material in the show, because that would be challenging. "

The path of academic least resistance will be taken. All the submissions will be anti Trump.

ARM doubles down on liberal bigotry. As we all know people in Appalachia voted unanimously for Trump.
Clown

MadTownGuy said...

On the day after the presidential election, our local paper (eastern panhandle of WV) couldn't bring itself to put up an actual picture of Trump so an ominous silhouette was used for the graphic. Then I saw the same type of image on the cover of The Economist. - I must wonder if the same or a similar image was used by other news sources.

JRoberts said...

I suggest an image of Mt. Rushmore with President Trump's face added.

Even better, an image of an empty EPA building in DC with a "Offices for Lease" sign out front.

David said...

"Meade said...
I'll be there, wearing my Badgers 2017 NCAA Champions shirt and Make America Great Again hat."


The only place you'll find the former is in Africa.,/i.

They haven't been printed yet for sure. win two more games and they will be.

They you can go to Africa, buy up a ton and make a killing in Wisconsin, all while depriving poor Africans of a cheap clean shirt.

JRoberts said...


On the empty EPA building, the work "A Good Start"

Unknown said...

"I sure hope there is some pro-Trump material in the show, because that would be challenging."

Yep, challenging.

Hopefully, most of the artists will just stick to Trump where it hurts.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...


"Hopefully, most of the artists will just stick to Trump where it hurts."

My, how original and brave! Being anti-Trump in Madison! Boy, that will sure hurt him - just like all the anti-Walker "art" just killed his chances during the recall.

LOL!

TWW said...

"Are you angry, satisfied, scared, ashamed, proud, disturbed, or something else entirely?"

View point neutral? Really? Let's deconstruct:

The solicitation begins with a negative. Would it have done so for a like Obama exhibition? Just speculation but I doubt it.

Next, what is and appropriate alternative to 'angry'? Is it 'Satisfied'? That's a little bland, isn't it? How about 'Elated' or 'thrilled'?

Next: "scared, ashamed". Very negative. Where is the counters? 'Proud', okay, that counters shame, perhaps, but "scared'? Where is 'relieved'?

Then, we end the 'Neutral' solicitation with 'disturbed'...or something else?

Neutral my ass.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Who killed Seth Rich?

That would be my poster.

WA-mom said...

If I lived there (and could draw), I'd do a painting of a MAGA-hat-wearing woman who is all bloodied up and smeared with feces.

Virgil Hilts said...

I picture a sculpture showing an attractive college age woman sporting a Hillary t-shirt and gay pride hat, holding up a sign depicting Mohammed weeping with the word "RESIST" in all caps, while right behind her is a young man from Yemen holding a plane ticket dated March 20 who is just starting to slice a machete into the woman's back.

tcrosse said...

How about "Piss Hillary" ?

RMc said...

Or the popular favourite, "CARA MEMBESARKAN PENIS"?

Fernandinande said...

(but you do have to be in the Madison area)

Geographobic bigots. This non-inclusive hate must stop.

Known Unknown said...

Remind me why Althouse lives in a college town when she could live in an Appalachian town where every single entry would be pro-Trump.

Would it? Imagine the world if we stop treating people like collective groups and started treating them like individuals with agency.

buwaya said...

"Imagine the world if we stop treating people like collective groups and started treating them like individuals with agency.'

Very few people, on matters not directly relevant to themselves, have a significant level of "agency". And very often even when these are matters relevant to themselves. Humans are designed to exist in collective groups and far more often than not they behave that way.

Henry said...

My piece would be a mirror.

Qwinn said...

I have to agree with the 2 posters who noticed that 4 of the adjectives are very negative and 2 blandly positive. This is balanced and non partisan, a 2-1 skew to the liberal side? This is the biased mindset that concludes Fox is "right wing" and CNN is "balanced".

Kevin said...

"Corniest approach: one sad woman in Muslim garb encountering a closed door."

You forgot the child. Trump's real target is the innocent children.

Fernandinande said...

Rob McLean said...
Or the popular favourite, "CARA MEMBESARKAN PENIS"?


This animated MEMPERBESAR PENIS display or explanation looks a bit like simulated pussy-grabbing even though it really seems to be about color saturation.

Caroline said...

I hear Wisconsin proliferates in marshland. Perhaps Meade will be inspired to train a lens on swamp-as-metaphor and see what creatures lurk just beneath the primordial ooze.

buwaya said...

"Perhaps Meade will be inspired to train a lens on swamp-as-metaphor and see what creatures lurk just beneath the primordial ooze."

No doubt there are, beneath those odd frozen lakes, strange structures constructed under the strictures of some inhuman, non-Euclidean geometry, by creatures that departed (or have they?) long before man presumed upon their ancient realm.

Owen said...

Never mind this, you should be blogging the hearings of Gorsuch. He is doing a wonderful job.

Limited blogger said...

Do you have a rat squiggle to enter?

Toto said...

Reminds me of all the blather at Sundance about 'diversity' of thought earlier this year. And then we get the same ol' perspectives. Left, lefter and leftiest.

But I'd be happily surprised to be wrong in this case. We'll see.

JaimeRoberto said...

"I'll be there, wearing my Badgers 2017 NCAA Champions shirt and Make America Great Again hat." So you'll be doing performance art, then?

And Madison area residents only? Now borders are OK?

khesanh0802 said...

Richard Dolan makes the most salient point. First, the exhibit will have nothing to do with what actually happens during Trump's first 100 days, and second, for the folks in Madison math is hard.

Big Mike said...

I like the way you think, tcrosse.

How about a picture of a Black Bloc protestor from Berkeley next to a picture of an ISIS executioner and you challenge the onlooker to tell them apart?

Fernandinande said...

JaimeRoberto said...
And Madison area residents only? Now borders are OK?


Xenophobes, fersure; the undocumented are disallowed.
"Fill out completely and print clearly." ...
Student ID #
OR Official ID # (driver license, passport, etc.):

gg6 said...

You must be kidding....count the negative vs positive adjectives in the opening 'invitation'. +50%. Count the obviously intended 'force' of the negative vs positive words used... +300%
Even if it doesn't exist, simply 'imagine' the invitational adjectives to the Obama art festival in 2008....or the 'goodbye barry and michelle art fest of 2017! Pathetic farce.

gg6 said...

Bravo to:
Blogger TWW
Blogger Gahrie
At least some people get what nonsense this is!

Jim at said...

It's simple:

306 > 232

And then choose a font.

geoffb said...

There used to be a big thing whose name began "Union" "Committee." It's gone but lives on on the American campus.

Greg Hlatky said...

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom.

DanTheMan said...

>>Official ID # (driver license, passport, etc.)


So, you need ID to enter a picture of Trump, but not to vote against him?

Danno said...

Blogger Meade said...I'll be there, wearing my Badgers 2017 NCAA Champions shirt and Make America Great Again hat.

I'd advise against the MAGA hat in Madtown. The lefties have entered another level of crazy since you ventured out during the Walker demonstrations. We don't want Ann to be a widow or see you with a disabling injury.

Danno said...

Blogger Caroline Walker said...I hear Wisconsin proliferates in marshland. Perhaps Meade will be inspired to train a lens on swamp-as-metaphor and see what creatures lurk just beneath the primordial ooze.

It's not just all cranberries, Caroline. Wisconsin has a great variety of geographic areas, including Western Upland, Eastern Ridges and Lowlands, Central Plain, Northern Highland and Lake Superior Lowland areas.

More info at link- http://www.wisconline.com/wisconsin/geoprovinces/westernupland.html and other links within that webpage. Some of Meade and Althouse posts have been visits to geographical oddities and interesting places in Wisconsin.

Lewis Wetzel said...

I am proud of Trump's first 100 days, but I am not necessarily proud of everything Trump has done (I didn't vote for Trump). The election of Trump, and well, his whole "Trumpness" confirms my belief that America is wonderful country. We remain a nation different from all others, we make history, we do not follow its dictates. The United States was founded in part by vagabonds and freebooters. Both Abraham Lincoln and P.T. Barnum were equally American, as were Tom Hayden and Curtis LeMay.
America! Greatest country in the world, ever!

Jim Howard said...

Anyone care to guess how many swastikas, straight arm salutes, and toothbrush mustaches will be displayed at this event?

JAORE said...

Motivation.... what ever could be the motivation?

Viewing President Trump through the lens of neutrality was the first concept, right?
Hmmm, seems a bit bland as motivation if actually true.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Arm,

I think we should put this assumption to a rigorously neutral test. I hear property values are depressed in much of the Appalachia.

3/21/17, 11:18 AM


I think I have never seen you suggest anything not calculated to harm people you disagree with.