‘Tis the Season for Bashing Christianity: Smithsonian Exhibit Most Expensive Ever, Features Ant-Covered Jesus Christ Statue, Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts, & Male Genitalia
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on November 29, 2010
Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery
Coming next to the Smithsonian Institution… an oil painting on velvet of Mohammad depicted as a dog.
JUST KIDDING.
Only Christians, their spiritual leaders and symbols, and Jesus Christ can be mocked, maligned, and depicted in disgusting ways in the name of “art” or “freedom of speech.”
Hence, we have a statue of Jesus Christ on a crucifix covered by ants in a film being shown as part of the Smithsonian Institute’s National Portrait Gallery’s expensive “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” exhibit.
Anything with a whiff of teasing or satire or parody against Islam, however, is forbidden. Any treatment or depiction at all of the Islam deity is subject to bleeding-heart leftists screaming “RAAAAACIST!” and Muslims demanding swift justice — which is usually a demand from the radicals of death to all infidels. Peace and tolerance… NOT.
A crucifix in the video 'A Fire in My Belly,' part of the 'Hide/Seek' exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. The image shows Christ on the cross with ants crawling over his body and face. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
However, a statue of Jesus Christ on a crucifix — His face and body covered by ants — in the museum’s film ‘A Fire in My Belly’ is art in the leftist world. Although, in the online descriptions of the Hide/Seek exhibits, the National Portrait Gallery has conveniently not included mention of the anti-Christian art piece in the video nor much information on the graphic homosexual art work in the exhibit.
Seems strange that they would leave that out.
Merry Christmas, taxpayers — more of your hard-earned tax money being spent without your input.
(CNSNews.com) — The federally funded National Portrait Gallery, one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, is currently showing an exhibition that features images of an ant-covered Jesus, male genitals, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts, and a painting the Smithsonian itself describes in the show’s catalog as “homoerotic.”
The exhibit, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” opened on Oct. 30 and will run throughout the Christmas Season, closing on Feb. 13.
“This is an exhibition that displays masterpieces of American portraiture and we wanted to illustrate how questions of biography and identity went into the making of images that are canonical,” David C. Ward, a National Portrait Gallery (NGP) historian who is also co-curator of the exhibit, told CNSNews.com.
A plaque fixed to the wall at the entrance to the exhibit says that the National Portrait Gallery is “committed to showing how a major theme in American history has been the struggle for justice so that people and groups can claim their full inheritance in America’s promise of equality, inclusion, and social dignity. As America’s museum of national biography, the NPG is also vitally interested in the art of portrayal and how portraiture reflects our ideas about ourselves and others.
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The Smithsonian Institution has an annual budget of $761 million, 65 percent of which comes from the federal government, according to Linda St. Thomas, the Smithsonian’s chief spokesperson. The National Portrait Gallery itself received $5.8 million in federal funding in fiscal year 2010, according to St. Thomas. It also received $5.8 million in federal funding in fiscal 2009, according to the museum’s annual report. The gallery’s overall funding in that year was $8 million.
St. Thomas told CNSNews.com that federal funds are not used to pay for Smithsonian exhibits themselves, including the “Hide/Seek” exhibit. The federal funds received by the Smithsonian, she said, pay for the buildings, the care of collections exhibited at Smithsonian venues, and museum staff, including the salaries for curators of exhibits. The exhibits presented at Smithsonian museums, including “Hide/Seek,” are funded by donations from individuals or institutions. Among the donors who provided support for the “Hide/Seek” exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery are The Calamus Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The John Burton Harter Charitable Foundation, and The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.
Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute and a former senior economist on the congressional Joint Economic Committee, told CNSNews.com, “If the Smithsonian didn’t have the taxpayer-funded building, they would have no space to present the exhibit, right? In my own view, if someone takes taxpayer money, then I think the taxpayers have every right to question the institutions where the money’s going.”
“Think about the Washington Post,” he said. “They don’t have to publish every op-ed that they get, right? They own the platform. In this case [the Smithsonian Institution], the taxpayers own the platform and so the taxpayers should decide what is presented on that platform.”
Gary Scott, an economist who is a senior research fellow at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, had a similar view.
“Leaving aside the merit or lack of it in the exhibit itself, the notion that taxpayers don’t fund it is unpersuasive,” said Scott. “First, most of the overall budget derives from tax monies for the facility, and maintenance and staff. Second, the exhibit appears inside and is monitored by staff. Finally, if it was funded only by outside funding the exhibit would be outside in a snowdrift.”
A spokesperson for the gallery’s external affairs office said the cost to mount the “Hide/Seek” exhibit is $750,000, the most expensive exhibition to date at the National Portrait Gallery.
Reminder: Draw Mohammad Day wasn’t received well by Muslims, who wanted people to DIE over it, and the woman who accidentally served as the catalyst for the movement, Molly Norris, has had to go into hiding because of non-stop Islamic death threats against her. A South Park episode also brought out the bloodlusting Islamic zealots’ threats of death, to the point that the episode was altered so as to not offend Muslims. But the show has taken many a potshot over the years at Christians and Catholics and Jews… however, despite being offended, there were no threats of killing the show’s creators by any Christian or Catholic or Jewish groups, so all’s fair in love and Nielsen ratings. It appears that only Muslims cannot be offended in this era of hopenchange.
And let us not forget the jaw-droppingly violent hysteria from Muslims across the globe when a Florida minister planned to burn a few Qurans as a political statement back in September 2010.
Media coverage on Christianity bashing, or Muslim radical attacks on churches, synagogues, cathedrals, and non-Islamics? Usually fraught with silence or hypocrisy — rarely any outcry.
Related:
Atlas Shrugs: Perhaps he was having a bad hair day and Today is Draw Motoon Day
American Thinker: Did You Know Israel Created Radical Islam?
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Muslim Bomber Arrested in Portland: Tried to Set Off Deadly Explosives to Kill People at Crowded Tree Lighting Ceremony (video) and Vile & Chilling: Muslim, Jew-Hating Student at University of San Diego Supports Genocide of Jews, Wrote “Death to Israel” on Internet (video) and Death to Infidels? South Park Creators’ Lives Threatened by Online NY Muslim Group for Depicting Muhammad as a Bear
Diary of a Mad Conservative: Muhammad is sacred. Jesus is the Joke.
Another Black Conservative: Comedy Central (aka Cowardly Central) censors South Park’s Mohammed episode
Ben Shapiro, Big Hollywood: EXCLUSIVE: Comedy Central Head in 2009: We’ll Let ‘South Park’ Do Mohammed
Gateway Pundit: Frightening… Muslim Student Association Member Admits Publicly She Supports Another Holocaust (Video) and Muslim Radicals Torch Home of Swedish Cartoonist Lars Vilks and Raging Muslim Students Screaming “Allahu Akbar” Assault Swedish Artist During Free Speech Lecture (Video)
James Hudnall, Big Hollywood: Censorship Must Die: My Draw Mohammed Day Entry
GayPatriot: A Day That Will Change the (Muslim) World?
FOX News: First Facebook, then YouTube: Muslim anger, court order trigger Pakistan websites bans and ‘South Park’ Creators Could Face Retribution for Depicting Muhammad, Website Warns
Hot Air: Facebook pulls “Everybody Draw Mohammed” page? and “South Park” Creators Poke Fun at Muhammad, Threatened by New York-based Radical Islamic Group
FrontPage: Theology for a Holocaust
Weasel Zippers: Muslim Students Association Member Tells David Horowitz She Supports Genocide Against Jews…
Michelle Malkin: Michelle Malkin: The eternal flame of Muslim outrage and “For it”
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