University Diaries » First the Bowling Green thing…

… and now the University of Connecticut has its own art controversy.

The Bowling Green thing, you recall, involved high ranking administrators sneaking into the campus gallery and removing a sculpture (High school teacher, male; high school student female; BJ.) they found offensive.

In the U Conn case, students have voted for the show to be moved out of the library and into the campus art museum (everyone has to use the library; few students, I guess, go to the museum).

The offensive material here is not sexual but animal.

The artist specializes in dead birds. One piece features “a dead brown sparrow on a noose with the phrase ‘The bird got what it deserved’ etched in glass.”

The artist complains that he is misunderstood.

Nelson says the title of the bird piece, “The Birdwatcher’s Verdict,” should indicate that it is about the preferences of birders for “good birds” like cardinals and bluebirds over invasive species like sparrows or starlings.

More broadly, the artist says that the exhibit’s title, Connecticut Wilderness, “is an oxymoron that refers to the sense of confusion and ambiguity that prevails in our lives, and that I try to portray in my artwork through multi-layered meanings and unusual visual imagery.”

Birders hate sparrows so much that they think they deserve lynching.

I’m not picking up on the ambiguity.

Anyway. Students are grossed out, don’t want to have to look at dead birds in the library, want the thing out of there now.

UD says more power to them. This controversy is really about the preferences of students for “good artists.”

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