Letter: Museum lowers standards with celebration of Elvis Presley
Published: October 15, 2009
Museum lowers standards with celebration of Elvis Presley
I am most disappointed in the front-page article of your Oct. 12 Opelika-Auburn News.
First, the celebration of Elvis and his pelvis as somehow being appropriate for our Jule Collins Smith Museum, with its actual involvement of our children in the cheap, glittery Elvis “culture.” The implied elevation of this to the status of “art” is a mockery.
The Jule Collins Smith Museum has the potential to advance arts in central Alabama. Most of its shows and programs over the past six years have done this very well. But that success will be badly tarnished by this Elvis birthday business.
Shall we paint the Jule Collins Smith Museum pink, sprinkle glitter all over the lawn, hang blinking lights in the shrubbery?
And won’t we be proud of our little children learning to wriggle their hips like burlesque dancers? Burlesque has always made money. Sex sells.
But isn’t it a trashy fundraiser?
And in your right-hand column,s we go all the way down to Tampa to find some person who blasts Christopher Columbus as being “very, very mean, very bossy,” to Texas A&M to trash the discovery of America and highlight the spreading of disease, and to Pennsylvania to find Columbus guilty as a thief and sentence him to life in prison. “Heroism and villany are just two sides of the same coin,” says your hero, Armesto.
So Jesus=Hitler=Jonas Salk=Saddam Hussein=Elvis=Beethoven, and it’s all “education.”
Nicholas D. Davis
Auburn
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I guess this letter writer doesn’t get out much. He thinks Elvis is a threat?
Shorter Nicholas D. Davis ~ “You wiggly hipped kids get off my lawn!“
Where in the Museum’s publicity did it ever state: “come celebrate Elvis’ pelvis?“
Secondly, by raising the question “Is This Art?“ the museum is doing its most inherent obligation by furthering dialogue on the question of Art. Your letter is proof of that.
I also feel you might underestimate the “give and take” nature of Arts Management, especially here in the deep south. By choosing such an exhibition as this one, the JCSM opens their doors to a constinuency that on any other occasion might not have the interests to reap the rewards of thier presence.
And since you admit “their shows and programs over the last six years have advanced the Arts in Central Alabama”...I’d hope you’d find it all worth the wait.
JCSM could be doing much, much worse.
DOC WALLER
Executive Artist Director
THE LAYMAN GROUP
www.thelaymangroup.org
Just as an FYI - I attended the Museum’s Birthday party - it was not a celebration of Elvis’ B-day but of the museum’s 6th anniversary. The theme was Elvis because of the beautiful black and white photos taken of Elvis when he was 21. Even if you don’t like Elvis (which I don’t) these photos are beautiful and show a bygone era. Also there was no dancing - burlesque or otherwise - the Pelvis the Elvis refered to a drawing instruction station of the human skelton. I think maybe Mr. Davis did not attend this event since he got everything wrong.
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