San Diego Unseen: An Urban Portrait
No nudes at the Martha Pace Swift Gallery at the Naval Training Center—not this time, anyway. That's the message that was sent to Wes Chester, co-director of Expressive Arts Institute and the curator of the space.
The gallery is owned by the NTC Foundation and contracted out to the Expressive Arts Institute. It is a unique, alternative-space gallery that is housed in the hallways, stairwells and lobby of one of the buildings in the NTC Promenade. Chester says he had the understanding that the Institute had full curatorial control and, in fact, the gallery has been allowed to show nude paintings before. But the upcoming exhibition was set to feature several colorful, large-scale paintings of naked figures—slightly abstracted but definitely figurative enough to recognize body parts.
"I was advised not to hang them," said Chester. "I was advised that it would cause trouble and that I would be a bad neighbor to resident groups if I hung the show."
The person doing the advising was Alan Ziter, executive director of the NTC Foundation, the nonprofit tasked with turning the former military training center into a destination for arts and culture. Chester says he received an email from Ziter after he submitted a few images of the nude paintings to the NTC Foundation for promotional purposes.
"I got back an email that said—the quote was, 'This would be a significant problem,'" Chester says. "So, I wasn’t told outright I couldn’t do it, but no negotiations from there have moved us forward."
Chester felt pressured enough to pull the plug on the exhibition. Now his artist is out of a big solo show and he's stuck figuring out what to do with the gallery for the next few months.
Ziter said he and the NTC Foundation never had an interest in curating the shows in either of their two public gallery spaces, the Martha Pace Swift Gallery or the gallery at Dance Place San Diego. But he says he thought Chester would be able to recognize when a line was being crossed.
"I didn’t want to censor or make decisions about where the line is on this," said Ziter, "but, No. 1, it’s our gallery and I should have the right to make that decision."
Ziter went on to say the nude paintings were a concern because they would be hanging in public corridors where tenants like Kids Included Together, ARTS A Reason to Survive and the Jenna Druck Center's Families Helping Families are located. He worried that unsuspecting parents bringing their kids to those services could be offended by the nude paintings.
"But to say 'no nudes at Naval Training Center' is not an accurate statement," Ziter said. "There are eight galleries here at NTC. Six of them are in spaces where there are private tenants [who can show nude work if they want]…. There are two public space gallery that the NTC foundation itself manages and they’re called public space galleries because they’re in public spaces. We don’t want to be curating galleries; our job is doing the development of the project, renovating the 26 buildings and making sure everyone is finding success. So we contracted with the Expressive Arts Institute to do the installations and curate the exhibitions for the space. It’s our gallery, but we pretty much gave Wes free reign to curate the space, with a focus on San Diego artists."
The free-reign thing, however, is up for debate. Ziter later sent a copy of the contract between the NTC Foundation and the Expressive Art Institute, and it does mention a vetting process.
But Chester says the interjection of any curatorial control at all by NTC Foundation came as a total surprise to both him and Judith Greer Essex, co-director at the Expressive Arts Institute. Chester said he felt the work was being censored for no good reason—he, too, works with kids and families and he said he didn't find the nude paintings at all controversial or offensive.
After some back and forth, Ziter sent both Essex and Chester an email, telling them he had talked to many other professionals and, "consistently, everyone says there is a difference between what you are saying is 'censorship' and what is 'appropriate' or even 'common sense' about the audience for this exhibit space."
Chester disagrees.
"When I heard that, I said, 'Well, you know, I've been in the arts for a long time and I don't think I need to talk to another professional to know when I'm being censored,'" Chester said. "Censorship is when work is denied to be shown based on the content of the work.... When we get down to something as basic as the nude in art, if you take that out of the equation of what I can show, then it’s going to be landscapes—we’re going to have abstract works and landscapes."
The censorship issue isn't the only thorn in the NTC's side. While the NTC Foundation has struggled with establishing a positive public image, especially with the arts community, now they have an even bigger public-relations disaster to deal with.
Last Wednesday, Kelly Bennett, arts reporter at Voice of San Diego, uncovered the problem with NTC's unexpected property-tax bills. Those bills could ultimately be passed along to several of NTC's tenants—many of them struggling arts organizations.
I talked to a few representatives from arts organizations who were facing possible rent increases, and they were concerned, but none of them seemed ready to wage war against the NTC Foundation—at least not yet, anyway.
And Chester doesn't want any bad blood between the Martha Pace Swift Gallery and the NTC Foundation, either. He said he just wanted to hang an interesting show. And now that there's been a disagreement about what's "interesting," he says he wants to have a public debate about the idea of censorship.
"We thought about putting together a forum or something," Chester said. "Because, what I want is for people to understand that what’s at stake isn’t just this show. What’s at stake is the ability to show art with integrity."
Ziter said he would be more than happy to host a forum on censorship. And, in fact, he says if Chester gets full approval of all the tenants in the building, he may even ultimately be OK with the show being displayed. He's not sure where, exactly, the line is for what kind of work should be shown at the public spaces at NTC, but he's interested in finding out.
"Wes can even use one of our buildings to host the forum," Ziter said.
Alan Ziter's response and other information has been added to the original post. Also, the original post implied that no nudes are allowed at NTC. This is inaccurate as there have been nudes and will continue to be nudes in the private galleries at NTC. We regret the error. Martha Pace Swift is a public-space gallery owned by the NTC Foundation, and the question of allowing this specific exhibition of nudes is what's up for debate.
