Going back to Vail

In May 2024 I wrote about the town of Vail, Colorado cancelling the artist-in-residency agreement with Danielle SeeWalker, before it even began, over complaints not of her planned art for Vail, but over other art previously made that she had reposted on social media, regarding Gaza.

My post concluded with this:

First, the cancellation of her artist-in-residency was not about any art made or anything she did during that residency: it had not yet begun. Second, just browsing her website reveals that her work is often political, explicitly dealing with the violence Europeans inflicted upon Native Americans, the exploitation, and the horrors of the boarding school system (about which she uses the term “genocide”). And so they offered the artist-in-residency to someone they knew often incorporated politics into her work, and, I am going to guess, were attracted by the “edginess” of bringing her to Vail.

I am not someone drawn to political art (nor do I hold that “all art is political”, except in the most banal sense). I find that in the vast majority of cases neither the political intent nor the aesthetic aspects of the work succeed (yes, I know there are a few exceptions, but they are few). I also think any writer or artist ought to think long and hard when they choose to use the word “genocide”. Calling a work “G is for Genocide” is not serious, and it is a subject warranting some gravitas.

But that’s just me; chacun à son goût. And “G is for Genocide” was not planned for a large-scale mural in Vail, scaring off the tourists, about which the town could have, rightly, demurred. But my take on her art, or the “messages from individuals looking closely at her social media posts”, are not the point. If you are going to present an artist, as a museum, a ballet company, or a town, then you commit to it. In each of the three cases I mention here [I discussed two other, similar cancellations in the post], nothing new was revealed about the artists from the time the commission was made. It’s just that the institutions got nervous: somebody is offended by who the artist is, whether Palestinian, Israeli, or a politically forthright Lakȟóta wíŋyaŋ. Show some courage.

Well, this is America: she sued, and a settlement was reached. The New York Times (gift link here) gives the details:

The settlement, which was announced last week, outlined four actions that Vail had agreed to take over the next five years, including hosting an annual powwow and providing annual cultural sensitivity training to employees in the town’s Arts in Public Places Department by an Indigenous-led organization.

The town also agreed to fund a new art program for underrepresented and economically disadvantaged people, and to sponsor and pay for a community forum on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A spokeswoman for Vail did not immediately comment on the settlement on Friday, but pointed to a statement the town released last week. The town denied any wrongdoing, saying it was “committed to promoting diverse programming through its Art in Public Places efforts, as well as supporting underrepresented artists.”

Well, as I said in my post last year, the town did do wrong. It cancelled a contract with someone because some people complained about one of her social media posts about Gaza (and, so we are clear, it would have been just as wrong to cancel a contract of someone who had made pro-Israel social media posts). It awarded a contract to someone with a well-documented history of left-wing politics, and then changed its mind when someone complained.

“Cultural sensitivity training to employees”? Here’s the thing: I bit they are already more culturally sensitive than the average bear, and it wasn’t lack of cultural sensitivity that led to the cancellation of the artist-in-residency. The cancellation occurred because it was thought to be politically and economically prudent. “A community forum on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”? Which will, in Vail, Colorado, accomplish what, exactly?

What Vail needs to think about is what it means to have an artist-in-residence, what they are meant to be. An artist pure and simple, or something more than that, a representative of something beyond art - “we as a town are edgy, but not too edgy”?

I’m left thinking they still don’t know what they are doing.