New York City Police and Secret Service agents rapidly shut down an art exhibit which was placed in a vacant storefront in Mnahattan. The exhibit was titled "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama." A performance artist, Yazmany Arboleda, decided to set up an impropmtu art exhibit in a storefront at West 40th Street in Midtown Manhattan, where the artist neatly stenciled the words "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama", on a plateglass window.
It did not take long for the New York City Police and Secret Service Agents to shut Arboleda down and to have building workers place large sheets of brown paper over the offending title of the "art show".
Guaranteeing good exposure, the gallery was set up right across the street from the New York Times building.
Later, Mr. Arboleda, who is 27, said in an interview: “It’s art. It’s not supposed to be harmful. It’s about character assassination — about how Obama and Hillary have been portrayed by the media.” He added, “It’s about the media.”
Arboleda was taken to the Midtown South police station for interrogation.
The building manager, Eric Joza, when asked about the artist and the show said, "I had no idea what he was going to do. All I knew is that he was an artist and was going to use the store for two days: today and tomorrow.” There are offices above the storefront."
After the interrogation, Arboleda was released and immediately called the media to report what had happened, saying, "The Secret Service had to do a whole questionnaire with me. It was about an hour of questioning. They asked if I owned guns, if I was a violent person, if I had ever been institutionalized.”
They also asked him to remove the shows title and his response was:
“I’m renting that space; the space was allocated for an exhibition and it’s my right to put those words up,” he said. “They said it could excite someone to do something crazy, like break the window. It’s terrible, because they’re violating my rights. If someone breaks a window, they’re committing a crime.”
When Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly was asked why the artist was being questioned, he replied, "Why would we question him? Well, we want to determine what his motives are. Obviously they could be interpreted as advocating harm to protectees; both of the senators, of course, are now being provided Secret Service protection, that’s why the Secret Service was interested; both of them are federal employees, so, ah, of course it is a concern to federal authorities as it is to ourselves. Our lawyers are researching it and will determine if there are any violations of law; right now he is being questioned.”
Yazmany Arboleda has two websites set up, one about Hillary Clinton and one about Barack Obama.
There have been many movies about assassinations, as is mentioned in the original article about today's event, (Photos of the title in the storefront window at that link) including the very controversial "Death of a President" and it becomes and issue of freedom of expression and free speech for many.
The question this leaves is whether this is art and does Yazmany Arboleda have the right to rent a space legally and title his art project any way he wants to, whether it is offensive and provoking or not?
Weigh in.
[Update] Here is the press release for the exhibit called "The Assassination of Barack Obama" and here is the press release for the exhibit called "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton".
Update #2] Video of part of the exhibit.
Cross posted at Digital Journal.
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