I regret that my curator-soldier analogy has acted as a lightening rod diverting us from the real storm. My aim was simply to ask that Gilbert’s actions be judged as heartfelt, no less so than anyone who has come to perceive that his or her role in a corrupt system is no longer open to compromise. It is I think worth noting however, that the soon to be Court Marshaled Lt. Watada was not economically coerced into military service from the inner city as are so many who join. He is a college graduate and an officer, the first to refuse service in the current Iraq war. One might say that as a professional soldier he chose to take direct action by eliminating his productivity within the system, instead of for example marching in a rally or other forms of symbolic protest.

To the Gilbert letter now:
1. What about the apparently miniscule fulcrum upon which Gilbert’s resignation pivoted? Was it really a single phrase in a wall label? The proverbial last straw? Or the actions of a man with too short a fuse or too little skill at compromise to achieve a greater, pedagogical goal? Yet if the presence or absence of the expression “solidarity” was indeed so minor, why did the museum’s middle managers object to it? Were they concerned its use would align them to a foreign government in the cross-hairs of the CIA and the State Department, thus tipping their institutional claims of neutrality towards a specific bias? (Recall the not so subtle threat made against the NAACP’s tax exempt status when they had the nerve condemn G.W.Bush’s policies just before the elections in 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7433-2004Oct28.html )

Without second-guessing the circumstances, clearly there was something larger at stake than a word or phrase. (BTW: I have not spoken with Gilbert since he first took his position at UBM.) From Gilbert’s letter he insists it is precisely the issue of false neutrality that his resistance hinged upon. “The museum and the bourgeoisie will always deny _the role of class interests in this: they will always maintain that the _kinds of cultural production they promote are more difficult, smarter, _more sophisticated…” Is it possible to see Gilbert’s argument as centered on his desire to shift the radical spirit of the exhibition from being about him as the visionary curator to the larger institutional frame? In other words, to force it to commit and thus marry the exhibition’s pedagogical content with a far greater force of signification: organizational partisanship directed at the oppressed, rather than the affluent? Does the entire incident perhaps then read differently if seen as exposing the inherent contradictions of post-60s institutional critique?

2. Was Gilbert’s resignation courageous? Was it a tactic worthy of emulation? Or was it too idiosyncratic, too full of bravado to be anything more than what Lenin would have labeled Left Wing Infantile Disorder? I am not entirely sure how to answer these questions except to admit to you that I would not so readily sacrifice my pseudo-Bohemian life style (and permit me tip my hat to the sadomasochistic needs of the art world since the paltry funds I score depend on its seemingly endless endurance of criticism), or to burn my bridges before setting off to teach English in a small Venezuelan village as Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina have done, all in support of the Bolivarian Revolution. I whish them much success, and although each day’s news pushes me closer to agreeing with Gilbert’s analysis that participating in the status quo at this historical juncture is to ignore the ubiquitous stench of “fascist imperialism,” I am not yet prepared for the potential consequences such a singular conclusion brings forth.

3. So where does that leave us? Here on this side of the radicalized shanty-towns of globalization; the civilian-riddled bombing-ranges of the new crusaders; the nameless, displaced “Americans” chewed up by collapsed infrastructure, gentrification, and ecological disaster? You and I of course can turn to the innumerable acts of tactical resistance that do, thankfully, take place in neighborhoods, on campuses, and occasionally even inside exhibition spaces. Certainly these humble gestures and fleeting interventions, which I have praised and occasionally engaged in, do matter. They have from time to time disrupted the symbolic ligaments that animate the menacing armature we clearly oppose. If only momentarily. Still, it is curious you must admit, that our praise seems to converge here, around these diffused acts of micro-resistance, yet when confronted with a head-on and unambiguous act of political opposition the result is uncertain, even divisive? And I mean this with no undertone of satire, no insinuation regarding a lack of faith. For our situation may be the result of nothing more than the old post-modernist condition at play? And maybe Gilbert's letter indicates that it is time to move on?

Yours in privileged solidarity - gregory