Uproar in Pittsburgh Over ‘Voyeur’ White Artist Daring to Paint Police Shooting

People are way too sensitive. So I guess I couldn’t blog about something I saw on TV because someone may question my intentions because of my nationality – PB/TK

Uproar in Pittsburgh Over ‘Voyeur’ White Artist Daring to Paint Police Shooting – By Jillian Kay Melchior / June 7 2017

A white artist submitted his painting of the death of Tamir Rice to a Pittsburgh art festival—a work he said was meant to show his outrage over the killing. But the artist’s critics have accused him of “white voyeurism” and creating “a modern-day lynching postcard,” prompting him to withdraw from the show.

After the story gained local attention in late May, the public rallied to the side of artist Tom Megalis. But organizers of the Three Rivers Art Festival, who had allowed him to withdraw his painting, said it was too late to incorporate it back into the exhibit. And the controversy is expected to be a central topic next week, when the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council hosts a panel on “cultural appropriation and the arts.”

The Pittsburgh story echoes the uproar earlier this year after the Whitney in New York displayed a white artist’s painting of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy lynched in 1955.

Critics demanded that the Whitney not only remove but destroy the painting, calling it exploitative and saying a white artist had “nothing to say to the Black community about Black trauma.”

Continue to heatst.com article: https://heatst.com/culture-wars/in-pittsburgh-uproar-over-white-artists-painting-of-tamir-rice/