Prof. Joonna Trapp

Address at Open Forum on Art Gallery Closing

October 23, 2007

Northwestern College

I must confess to being torn on this issue. I understand the position the administration was placed in by decisions and actions of the director of the art gallery. Very few faculty on this campus would bring such inflammatory remarks as is found in the artist’s statements into our classes without careful and thoughtful consideration and educational guidance. I believe that doing so in the context of a what was meant to be a celebration of the history of the college was especially grievous. Since any art gallery, performance hall, or theater space on a college campus is a kind of classroom, the faculty associated with those spaces must be attentive to educational concerns as any of us in a traditional classroom. Indoctrination is never appropriate.

But the art works themselves are another matter altogether. I disagree that the canvas is blasphemous. Alone, they invite serious thought of the role art plays in cultural critique. The viewer brings to the art the interpretation, which is the way art is supposed to work.

But these issues seem beside the point to me tonight. Decisions were made, the art and statements were hung, and in quite visible places. People complained. What’s a college to do under these circumstances? A college such as ours stand in community, and we desire to communicate with that community. Anything the college does can support and remind us all of the values we share in common. But the college in times of distress has and will set itself against prevailing values and try to change values that we might view as denials of stronger values of ethics and morality. And clearly, since this artist comes from this community, the community as such is not univocal, but rather multivocal. We should expect a variety of insights and positions on troubling issues.

For if a college stands to serve any purpose in this country, in this community, it is to foster the continued dialog and debate on matters that may be hard to talk about outside its walls. The highest value a college can have is to support intellectual, spiritual, and artistic curiosity. We yearn and desire to know, and we resist any fingers on our ability to seek and question. Exposure to opposite and unusual views is in fact the delight of education. It’s why the faculty are here. It’s why we breathe the air of this college. Any fingers of control on this exercise removes the joy that is educational discourse. It was with great joy that the prophet wrote, Come let us reason together sayeth the Lord.

If the closing of the gallery was a lone incident, my guess is that the outrage would have been far less. Yeah, it was a touchy situation, difficult, complicated. But unfortunately, it is not a lone incident. Taken in context, a pattern of control has emerged which saddens me and makes much of the faculty nervous. Last year, a beloved professor was publicly censored for statements he made in chapel. And though we were promised many discussion opportunities to deal with the dismay over this event, only one forum like this one was offered. The dialog was shut down. More recently when faculty asked questions, wanted information, even debate over the recent change of administrative leaders, we were told that we had hurt Northwestern College. Whatever the intent, the statement was made to the entire faculty, and it shut down dialog. And finally, a group of students on their own initiative planned to create safe places for conversations about difficult matters. They were asked to not go forward at this time, for the time was not right. Another opportunity for dialog was temporarily shut down. And now this.

Instead of heeding the forces demanding our compliance from outside the college, and empowering them to believe that whatever they want us to do, we’ll do, why not explain that this is a college. It is a dangerous place, it is a place of ideas. And if we want to remain a real college, we must learn to live with discomfort and unease as a part of the discourse of community. Explain that learning to be hospitable to ideas and otherness is vital to the health and life of Northwestern. Why not instead of shutting the gallery down, we apologize for the outlandish artist’s diatribes, remove them, and invite people to a conversation about the art separate from the written notes?

As a member of the faculty, I have to stand on freedom of expression. Closing the gallery sends the wrong message to our constituency, it hurts our students, and it saps the joy that is found in the exchange of ideas.