Speaker 1: Pushkin. This show contains adult language and occasional descriptions of violence.
Speaker 1: Please keep that in mind when choosing when and where
Speaker 1: to listen. Previously on death of an artist. So the
Speaker 1: best way to protect him was to respect his wish
Speaker 1: for rural silence, I would say, and also to take
Speaker 1: him at his word. I couldn't establish that she wanted
Speaker 1: to get a divorce as she feared his reaction, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't talk about any of that. How can it
Speaker 1: be that there can be so many curators in these
Speaker 1: institutions and one curator can't say I'm uncomfortable with that show.
Speaker 1: This is press play. I'm Madeline Brand. Let's talk now
Speaker 1: about some bad news that's hit a couple of local museums.
Speaker 1: Mocha Downtown has fired its chief curator, Helen Molesworth. To
Speaker 1: talk about these stories, we have Caroline and Miranda with us.
Speaker 1: She writes the Culture High and Low column for the
Speaker 1: La Times. I think she was an important get for
Speaker 1: Los Angeles at the curatorial level and a scholar who
Speaker 1: was really devoted to rewriting the history of art in
Speaker 1: the sense of making sure that it was more inclusive
Speaker 1: of women in particular. She's a feminist art historian as
Speaker 1: well as people of color. Helen was very dedicated to
Speaker 1: the idea that part of her job was to look
Speaker 1: at what had been overlooked. Well, that's me they're talking
Speaker 1: about on the local radio station. Everyone I know listens to.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I still find it embarrassing. I started
Speaker 1: working in junior high school. I've always had a job,
Speaker 1: and I mean like job, job anyway, as you can tell,
Speaker 1: I got fired and if that wasn't bad enough, I
Speaker 1: got fired very publicly, like New York Times coverage. Publicly. Okay,
Speaker 1: So apparently Helen Molesworth clashed with the director of Mocha.
Speaker 1: What were the disagreements about. I think some of it
Speaker 1: came up last month when the artist Marked Grochan, who
Speaker 1: was scheduled to be honored at the gala, ended up
Speaker 1: with drawing his name from the gala, saying that what
Speaker 1: Mocha really needed to do was be honoring somebody else,
Speaker 1: that he would have represented the third white male artist,
Speaker 1: straight white male artist in a row that the museum
Speaker 1: was honoring. And as part of that news, the board
Speaker 1: member Larry Pittman ended up resigning from the board, and
Speaker 1: Larry is a part Colombian painter. He's Latino. He is
Speaker 1: also gay. He came out in the nineteen seventies, and
Speaker 1: he said that he felt that the museum was not
Speaker 1: really as devoted to issues of inclusion and diversity as
Speaker 1: they might be paying lip service to the mission of
Speaker 1: a museum is fundamentally twofold to educate the public about
Speaker 1: art and to decide what art is good enough to
Speaker 1: be saved in perpetuity. This is a nice way of
Speaker 1: saying that part of what a museum does is decide
Speaker 1: why some art is better than other art, why some
Speaker 1: art is considered great, so great that it's worth the time, money,
Speaker 1: and energy it takes to display, interpret, and save it.
Speaker 1: Honest story made me realize how much DNA museums share
Speaker 1: with courts of law. Both are institutions where the basic
Speaker 1: rules were written centuries ago, and both have been historically
Speaker 1: run by highly educated, affluent white men, experts who come
Speaker 1: together to decide upon the merits of this, that or
Speaker 1: the other piece of evidence. In museums, this work is
Speaker 1: done by curators and the justices. It is done by
Speaker 1: lawyers and judges. The rub is once a decision is made,
Speaker 1: the exhibition opens or the verdict is read, the public
Speaker 1: never sees what's been left out. The process itself of curating,
Speaker 1: of adjudicating, of choosing this, but not that this is
Speaker 1: also a process of silencing. We've all done this. There's
Speaker 1: no way to tell a story without leaving something out.
Speaker 1: We have done it with the story we are telling you.
Speaker 1: The question is what are the ramifications of those omissions
Speaker 1: or suppressions. In Animandietta's case, there were at least two
Speaker 1: pockets of silence. There was the historical omission of art
Speaker 1: made by women in museums, and there was the suppression
Speaker 1: of crucial pieces of evidence in the trial. Both would
Speaker 1: have an enormous effect on how her art was understood
Speaker 1: and how people saw her death. I'm your Host Helen
Speaker 1: Molesworth from Pushkin Industries, Something Else and Sony Music Entertainment.
Speaker 1: This is Death of an Artist, Episode five. The silencing
Speaker 1: the People versus Andrea stretched over two weeks during the
Speaker 1: winter of nineteen eighty eight. Ironically, Anamandietta's first retrospective exhibition
Speaker 1: at the New Museum was closing just as the trial began.
Speaker 1: The show had been hastily thrown together by her supporters
Speaker 1: and visitors to that show would have seen photographs of
Speaker 1: her body pressed into the ground, photographs of her stone
Speaker 1: carvings from Cuba, and her delicate drawings of primordial female forms.
Speaker 1: At the trial, however, the defense painted a picture of
Speaker 1: Anna that veered more towards caricature than reality. And I
Speaker 1: remember they asked me these questions, like I guess they
Speaker 1: were trying to establish that she killed herself, like if
Speaker 1: this was some sort of like culminating art piece, that
Speaker 1: she killed herself, which is ridiculous. The strategy started on
Speaker 1: the very first day when Natalia Delgado took the stand.
Speaker 1: When Carl's lawyer Jack Hoffinger questioned Natalia, he didn't ask
Speaker 1: about Carl and Anna's relationship. He wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: Anna's artwork. And they kept talking about impact body impacting
Speaker 1: on the earth. And I could see how they could
Speaker 1: try to make that argument, because she would like press
Speaker 1: herself into the earth, or she would like cover her
Speaker 1: withself with mud and stand against a tree. But thing
Speaker 1: her work was about the human body and all sorts
Speaker 1: of things in nature, and it was not at all
Speaker 1: about impacting on the earth. Carl's lawyers insinuated that the
Speaker 1: evidence for suicide was Anna's artwork. Hoffinger suggested that her
Speaker 1: use of blood and earth were signs of an unconscious
Speaker 1: death wish. Never mind. Anna's own explanation of why she
Speaker 1: used blood again, read by artist Tanya Bugera. I started
Speaker 1: immediately using blood, I guess because I think is a
Speaker 1: very powerful, magical thing. I don't see it that's a
Speaker 1: negative force. For Anna. Blood was a way to connect
Speaker 1: art with everyday life. Blood was real and using it
Speaker 1: was a way to make art with the stuff of
Speaker 1: the world, the stuff of the body, not something fake
Speaker 1: or pristine. Anna's friends in the courtroom, such as be
Speaker 1: Ruby Rich, could see where it was all headed. It
Speaker 1: was totally blamed the victim, but with an extra twist.
Speaker 1: It was completely racist. It was constructing an idea of
Speaker 1: this hot blooded latina who drank and misbehaved and quote
Speaker 1: went out a window. It's starting to get ugly, and
Speaker 1: it's all the uglier because it's such an old move.
Speaker 1: If you're a defense lawyer defending a murder, you always
Speaker 1: want to put the dead person on trial. You always
Speaker 1: want to dirty up the victim as much as you can.
Speaker 1: That's Ron Koubi again, the longtime defense lawyer who helped
Speaker 1: us understand some parts of the trial. What he doesn't
Speaker 1: say is that when you put the victim on trial,
Speaker 1: the perpetrator gets to sit silent. And Jack Hoffinger was savvy,
Speaker 1: a top notch criminal defense lawyer. His first line of
Speaker 1: attack paint Anna as a drunk. The way that the
Speaker 1: drinking played into the trial was disturbing. The drinking was
Speaker 1: pinned on Anna and not pinned on Carl. How do
Speaker 1: you explain that they were drinking all night together in
Speaker 1: the same room, but her corpse gets the blood alcohol
Speaker 1: test his living body evidently doesn't. Anna had a blood
Speaker 1: alcohol level of zero point one eight, well above the
Speaker 1: legal limit for driving. Notably, no evidence was submitted about
Speaker 1: Carl's blood alcohol level. Hoffinger suggested that Anna was so
Speaker 1: drunk she might have accidentally fallen out the window, a
Speaker 1: theory that did not account for the significant height of
Speaker 1: the window sill halfway up her body at least, and
Speaker 1: her well known fear of heights, which her friend Marcia
Speaker 1: Pelle's testified to. But seating doubt was the point. They
Speaker 1: weren't trying to prove what happened, They were trying to
Speaker 1: create reasonable doubt if she was drunk. It could have
Speaker 1: been an accident, and if it wasn't an accident, then
Speaker 1: maybe it was a suicide. Here's Lisa Phillips, currently director
Speaker 1: of the New Museum, who attended the trial when she
Speaker 1: was a curator at the Whitney. They used every single
Speaker 1: stereotypical image they could dredge up as some indication that,
Speaker 1: you know, hot blooded, tempestuous, that she would throw herself
Speaker 1: out the window. I don't believe that she committed suicide,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. The suicide theory was, for Anna's supporters,
Speaker 1: completely bogus. It simply did not jibe with Anna's personality.
Speaker 1: To further the suicide theory, Hoffinger also focused on Anna's
Speaker 1: interest in the Afro Cuban religion Santaia. Remember what her
Speaker 1: friend el Triano said about her, that she was not
Speaker 1: a Santa that she was interested as a scholar, not
Speaker 1: a practitioner. But Santaria was useful for Carl's case. There
Speaker 1: are no witches in Santaria, but that didn't stop Carl's
Speaker 1: lawyers from using the oldest play in the sexist handbook,
Speaker 1: basically wonder out loud about whether or not she's a witch.
Speaker 1: Carl's attorney, Hoffinger basically based his analysis of why she
Speaker 1: might have commuted suicide on Sandvidia on voodoo, and this
Speaker 1: was very, very disturbing. Huffinger knew Anna had named some
Speaker 1: of her artworks after Afro Cuban deities, including one called
Speaker 1: yema Yah. He asked one of her friends about her
Speaker 1: interest in the deity. On the witness stand, the friends
Speaker 1: said yem Yah is a deity that takes flight. She
Speaker 1: was interested in researching it. And in a statement that
Speaker 1: brought a hush over the courtroom, the witness said, yem
Speaker 1: Yah takes flight on September seventh, and everyone knew that
Speaker 1: Anna went out the window on September eighth. Eltriana was
Speaker 1: horrified when she heard this testimony. I think he really
Speaker 1: hit below the belt when he decided to speak about
Speaker 1: ye my Yah, sort of saying that Anna had conceived
Speaker 1: of her death, saying that she may have done this
Speaker 1: in the context of her artwork. The reason Ella thinks
Speaker 1: this is below the belt is not only is it wrong,
Speaker 1: Yemaya does not take flight. She is a deity connected
Speaker 1: to the ocean and is often imaged as a mermaid.
Speaker 1: It's also highly disrespectful. Yemaya the goddess of motherhood and
Speaker 1: the Ocean, is the highest ranking female deity in Santaria.
Speaker 1: Implying that Anna's interest in Yemaya led to a death
Speaker 1: wish is analogous to wondering if a woman who believes
Speaker 1: in the Virgin Mary is responsible for her son's death
Speaker 1: at the hands of others. Kokofusco, the artist and author
Speaker 1: of Dangerous Moves performance in Politics in Cuba, was also
Speaker 1: horrified when she heard what was unfolding in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: I was having conversations with all these different people about
Speaker 1: the trial, which was very dramatic. I personally did not
Speaker 1: go to the trial. But what I remember that was
Speaker 1: particularly upsetting to me was the utterly racist interpretation of
Speaker 1: her work. This idea that somehow or other, because she
Speaker 1: had really an anthropological interest in Afro Cuban religion, that
Speaker 1: that automatically meant that she was some kind of crazy
Speaker 1: person involved in voodoo. Because the Americans didn't differentiate at
Speaker 1: the time between Santheia and Vulu, even though the roots
Speaker 1: African roots of those two religions are entirely different, but
Speaker 1: they were utilizing stereotypes about voodoo that come from Hollywood
Speaker 1: musicals right about people losing their minds, and that was
Speaker 1: not the relationship that Data had to Santania, which she
Speaker 1: studied academically. It was unclear what the judge thought of
Speaker 1: all this, and that mattered a great deal, as the
Speaker 1: verdict rested solely on his opinion. But it was clearly
Speaker 1: upsetting to Anna's friends. They believed in her as an artist.
Speaker 1: She wasn't experimenting with voodoo or Santarilla. She was someone
Speaker 1: on the cutting edge of performance in land art, making
Speaker 1: gorgeous work about our relationship to the earth, to the land,
Speaker 1: two ideas of home. She was interested in Stonehenge and
Speaker 1: Egyptian pyramids and Native American rock carvings. Anna's supporters, even
Speaker 1: Robert Katz, who attended every day of the trial, were
Speaker 1: surprised that Karl was allowing Anna to be portrayed as
Speaker 1: someone who was suicidal or crazy. Of course, for the lawyer,
Speaker 1: it was a necessity. Here's what Hoffinger said to Robert Kats.
Speaker 1: He did not encourage any any kind of denigration of
Speaker 1: Anna in any way, shape or form. We did not
Speaker 1: want that, and we did our best not to go
Speaker 1: too far. Even though they'd tried not to go too far.
Speaker 1: Anna's supporters clearly thought they'd sullied Anna's reputation. They'd implied
Speaker 1: she was a drunk. They'd painted a picture of someone
Speaker 1: who was unreasonable, hot headed and out of control, someone
Speaker 1: who was troubled and caused trouble. And part of the
Speaker 1: reason they were able to describe her this way is
Speaker 1: precisely because there are no metaphorical mothers in art history,
Speaker 1: no backdrop of women geniuses to connect her work to. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Carl sat silent. Here's El Troiano again. The trial was insulting.
Speaker 1: Watching Carl sitting there reading during the trial was insulting.
Speaker 1: The day of closing arguments coincided with the opening day
Speaker 1: of Carl's exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Madrid, a
Speaker 1: soaring nineteenth century pavilion where white cast iron column defintely
Speaker 1: hold up a roof and walls made out of glass.
Speaker 1: The images of the exhibition online look gorgeous. We see
Speaker 1: Andre's somber metal plates on the floor with all of
Speaker 1: this light and air above them. It made me wonder
Speaker 1: about how much of what I love about Carl's work
Speaker 1: is that he broke the do not touch rule? Was
Speaker 1: he able to break that rule because he thought the
Speaker 1: rules didn't apply to him. I thought about how much
Speaker 1: the art world values rule breakers, and I wondered, on
Speaker 1: that last day of the trial if any of the
Speaker 1: visitors in Madrid were thinking about Carl, who was waiting
Speaker 1: in the courtroom to see what, if any, rules would
Speaker 1: apply to him. On February eleventh, nineteen eighty eight, Judge
Speaker 1: Lessinger had a verdict. The players assembled. There was Anna's
Speaker 1: family and friends, a small press contingent, and Carl still
Speaker 1: in his workers overalls alone except for his lawyers. When
Speaker 1: the judge took his bench, the courtroom was silent. The
Speaker 1: judge said, quote, I have concluded that the evidence has
Speaker 1: not satisfied me beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant
Speaker 1: is guilty. Carl Andre had been acquitted. As the courtroom emptied,
Speaker 1: reporters gathered around Anna's family and listened as Anna's mother said,
Speaker 1: I know he killed my daughter. Meanwhile, Carl and his
Speaker 1: lawyer were also surrounded by reporters. Carl's only comment, justice
Speaker 1: has been served. Carl's lawyer, Jack Hoffinger, later talked to
Speaker 1: Robert Katz about the outcome. This was a very important
Speaker 1: case because what it proved was that the system works
Speaker 1: because that system, that trial pertects us against unfair accusations,
Speaker 1: every one of us, You, me, everyone else. Carl shared
Speaker 1: the news of his acquittal with his friends Saul and
Speaker 1: Carol LeWitt. He said that justice has been done, I
Speaker 1: said I regulations all. While a civil case requires a
Speaker 1: preponderance of evidence, criminal trials demand an even higher form
Speaker 1: of proof. Guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: This means no other plausible explanation can be gleaned from
Speaker 1: the evidence that makes it to trial. Here's Ron Koubie,
Speaker 1: the defense lawyer. Again, the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: The promise most people don't make decisions in their life
Speaker 1: based on proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Basically, regular people
Speaker 1: on a jury are used to making decisions based on
Speaker 1: what they think makes the most sense, using the information
Speaker 1: they have, whereas a judge is accustomed to using a
Speaker 1: higher standard of not just reasonable, but beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: And so when you have somebody who the jury is
Speaker 1: not gonna like, who already looks squirrely because of what
Speaker 1: he perveys for a living, and who probably did it,
Speaker 1: that person is probably going to be convicted again. Judges
Speaker 1: tend to apply that beyond a reasonable doubt standard more
Speaker 1: carefully in a case like this, they recognize this evidence
Speaker 1: is circumstantial. Judges tend to be more meticulous about what
Speaker 1: a reasonable doubt is. I for sure understand his point.
Speaker 1: There's an ethical elegance to reasonable doubt and its presumptions
Speaker 1: of innocence until proven guilty. My problem is I have
Speaker 1: what I consider to be reasonable doubt about Carl Andre's
Speaker 1: not guilty verdict. And one of the many reasons I'm
Speaker 1: skeptical is because there is no official record that any
Speaker 1: of this happened. When Carl was acquitted, his trial records
Speaker 1: were permanently sealed. Not even the Freedom of Information Act
Speaker 1: can open them. And we tried pretty hard to get
Speaker 1: these records, but it turns out the only person who
Speaker 1: can open them is Carl. This means all of the
Speaker 1: evidence from the nine one one call to the polaroids
Speaker 1: of the scratches is now gone from public view. All
Speaker 1: of the case documents in the hands of the police,
Speaker 1: the DA's office, and in the courts are unattainable to
Speaker 1: lay people in any fashion whatsoever. Even their existence will
Speaker 1: not be confirmed. This is how New York State protects
Speaker 1: those found not guilty. I have a lot of trouble
Speaker 1: accepting this. None of Carl's friends at the trial to
Speaker 1: hear what might have happened. Carl never takes the stand
Speaker 1: and never had to answer a single question publicly. Carl
Speaker 1: would go more than two decades without saying anything publicly
Speaker 1: about Anna. Silence was the play, and it worked. Carl
Speaker 1: Andre is an extremely private person, as you may have guessed.
Speaker 1: I mean, he doesn't want his photograph taken. You can
Speaker 1: publicize his works, but you can't talk about his private
Speaker 1: life with him. He won't talk to you about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a publication, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: He might talk if your friends, but doesn't want the
Speaker 1: world to be And one of the horrors of this
Speaker 1: case is that to some extent, his life and her
Speaker 1: life would publicize, which is not something he wanted to do.
Speaker 1: That's Carl's lawyer, Jack Hoffer again. And it's certainly true
Speaker 1: that Carl steered clear of the press for a very
Speaker 1: long time. But when The New Yorker and the New
Speaker 1: York Times came calling in advance of his big retrospective exhibition,
Speaker 1: his opposition to discussing his private affairs did not hold.
Speaker 1: He answered questions, he allowed his photo to be taken.
Speaker 1: He even appeared in a short video made by the newspaper.
Speaker 1: But I must say, as I have grown older, my
Speaker 1: physical capacities have been very much reduced. So I used
Speaker 1: to be able to sling those timbers around like nothing
Speaker 1: at all, and I don't want to try nowadays. In
Speaker 1: the years immediately following the verdict, Honest supporters spoke openly
Speaker 1: about the investigation, the trial, and the acquittal. Friends and
Speaker 1: family spoke to Robert Katz for his book Naked by
Speaker 1: the Window, and his interviews, combined with the fact that
Speaker 1: he had both seen the documents that were now sealed
Speaker 1: and had attended every day of the trial, meant Katz
Speaker 1: was the only person who knew the whole story, such
Speaker 1: as it could be told. When the book came out
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety, there was a small flurry of press,
Speaker 1: but even though his book was exhaustively researched, he and
Speaker 1: a colleague together conducted more than two hundred interviews. I've
Speaker 1: heard more than one art world insider referred to it
Speaker 1: as quote but horrible book because it was written in
Speaker 1: the language of journalism. Many people thought it was sensational
Speaker 1: and unnuanced. He was an outsider who just didn't get it,
Speaker 1: and being skeptical about the way the book was written
Speaker 1: meant folks didn't have to grapple with its conclusions. And
Speaker 1: then life went on. Carl spent time in Europe. He
Speaker 1: continued to live in the same apartment, he remarried, he
Speaker 1: showed at the same galleries. He still made art, and
Speaker 1: his work continued to sell well. Number two seventeen is next.
Speaker 1: This is the Carlandre nineteen prime rectile that's worked from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, and it's opened this now at one
Speaker 1: ten one twenty one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. So
Speaker 1: while Carl's story might have made some folks uneasy as
Speaker 1: a story, as a problem, it moved to the background.
Speaker 1: There was less and less talk about what happened, and
Speaker 1: eventually most of honest supporters stopped talking about Carl and
Speaker 1: the trial too. It's like he's been scrubbed from the record.
Speaker 1: They'd rather talk about her art in her life, they'd
Speaker 1: rather secure her legacy, and they'd prefer to do so
Speaker 1: in a context that doesn't include Carl, who can blame them,
Speaker 1: even if oddly it contributes to the silence. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until there was another extremely horrible and very public accusation
Speaker 1: of espousal murder, but the conversation would be reignited. We
Speaker 1: the jury and the aboved entitle action find the defendant
Speaker 1: Ornhal Jane Simpson not guilty of the crime of murder.
Speaker 1: Across the nation and around the world, virtually everyone watched
Speaker 1: as judgment day came swiftly for OJ Simpson. Remember the
Speaker 1: Gorilla Girls, the anonymous group of feminist artists dedicated to
Speaker 1: calling out the sexism of the art world. The O. J.
Speaker 1: Simpson acquittal inspired them to make another poster, so we thought, well,
Speaker 1: let's bring this up again, because it really was a
Speaker 1: related situation. It was clear that something went on between
Speaker 1: Carl Andrea Anamantia and she ended up dead and O J.
Speaker 1: Two and both of them got off the hook. That's
Speaker 1: one of the Gorilla Girls. They made a poster in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five that placed a snapshot of Carl in
Speaker 1: profile next to a head shot of one of the
Speaker 1: most famous and celebrated athletes in the world. O. J.
Speaker 1: Simpson reasoned across the top was the question what do
Speaker 1: these men have in common? What do these men have
Speaker 1: in common? Every fifteen seconds, another woman as assaulted by
Speaker 1: her husband or boyfriend. Some of these assaults end in murder.
Speaker 1: Usually there are no eyewitnesses to these crimes. Unlike their
Speaker 1: other posters, there was no humor, no sly commentary, nothing
Speaker 1: to ameliorate the pain. There was something very stark about
Speaker 1: seeing Carl's face right next to OJ's, but comparison was undeniable,
Speaker 1: and it seemed to puncture any exceptionalism the art world
Speaker 1: was banking on for itself. These would have gone up
Speaker 1: around Soho and in the East Village, where there were
Speaker 1: a lot of artists living and a lot of fledgling galleries.
Speaker 1: The Guerrilla Girls were directly linking Anna's death to the
Speaker 1: increasing awareness of domestic violence, an issue that had just
Speaker 1: begun to be part of a public conversation. The Oj
Speaker 1: simpsonral was on TV all the time, and the story
Speaker 1: of domestic violence and domestic violence homicides went from the
Speaker 1: back page to the front page. This is Este Solare,
Speaker 1: one of the women behind the nineteen ninety four Violence
Speaker 1: Against Women Act, the first bill to fully address domestic violence.
Speaker 1: She worked the halls of Congress hard in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties and had to endure one congressman calling it the
Speaker 1: quote take fun out of Marriage Act. And people started
Speaker 1: really talking about the fact that so many other women
Speaker 1: were victims of domestic violence, and people were given license
Speaker 1: to come out and talk about it more as well,
Speaker 1: because it was such a public narrative. Before, oj Esta
Speaker 1: practically had to beg newspapers and news outlets to write
Speaker 1: about domestic violence. Now her phone was ringing off the hook.
Speaker 1: It was absolutely clear he was guilty. The court said
Speaker 1: he was innocent, and I've spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: with Nicole's family and they don't think he's innocent at all.
Speaker 1: Whatever the court said, the trial nevertheless put domestic violence
Speaker 1: and spousal homicide front and center. The trial and the
Speaker 1: story was transformative in terms of how the US warhold
Speaker 1: really saw the issue of domestic violence again. It really
Speaker 1: took on, Oh my god, this is really a serious problem.
Speaker 1: It was a turning point. The issue went from the
Speaker 1: privacy to the public sphere pretty dramatically. The Gorilla Girls
Speaker 1: suggested that on a story wasn't merely a unique instance
Speaker 1: depending on how you saw it of a drunken accident, suicide,
Speaker 1: or an argument gone wrong. Honest story was part of
Speaker 1: a much larger social problem. More than ninety percent of
Speaker 1: women who are murdered are killed by when they know
Speaker 1: the perpetrators are often their husbands, boyfriends, or exes. But
Speaker 1: the awareness of domestic violence as an issue was just
Speaker 1: starting to be named as a problem when Anna died.
Speaker 1: Early on and the eighties and the late seventies, women
Speaker 1: were being beaten and battered and most people didn't know
Speaker 1: about it. It was private, it was silent, it was hidden,
Speaker 1: and more than that, more than that, they were often
Speaker 1: blamed for what happened to them. So it was a
Speaker 1: combination of feeling invisible and also responsible. Before Nicole Brown
Speaker 1: Simpson's death made domestic violence visible, it was typically considered
Speaker 1: a private matter, and because it was private, it was
Speaker 1: not to be spoken about publicly. This silence almost always
Speaker 1: benefited the aggressor rather than the victim, and while Oj
Speaker 1: wasn't convicted because of this visibility, he suffered consequences, Carl
Speaker 1: did not. He lost his endorsements, his television and movie
Speaker 1: appearances evaporated. He was effectively shunned. The art world took
Speaker 1: no such extra judicial measures. If you look at Carl's resume,
Speaker 1: easily available on his personal website, you'll find that he
Speaker 1: has exhibited often multiple times, every single year since nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five. His shows were reviewed in the New York Times,
Speaker 1: and then in twenty eleven he landed a coveted profile
Speaker 1: in The New Yorker. It felt like an attempt to
Speaker 1: revise his reputation before he got the biggest feather in
Speaker 1: any artist's cap a major museum retrospective. And it was
Speaker 1: in the New Yorker profile where he finally broke his
Speaker 1: silence and offered the following version of what happened that night.
Speaker 1: Here's what he said, read by a voice actor. I
Speaker 1: was asleep. I was in bed, and when I heard
Speaker 1: cries of no, no, no, it had been quite balmy,
Speaker 1: like eighty degrees, and the temperature went down to about
Speaker 1: sixty All of a sudden, what Anna did was to
Speaker 1: get up and start closing the windows because cold air
Speaker 1: was blowing in. Anna had to climb up. She was
Speaker 1: barely five feet. To close those windows, you had to
Speaker 1: do it from the middle so they wouldn't jam, and
Speaker 1: in trying to close those windows, she just lost her balance.
Speaker 1: This is Carl's a fourth version of what happened, and
Speaker 1: it's entirely different from the previous versions. Is it really
Speaker 1: any wonder that so many people still don't believe him?
Speaker 1: An artist named Elise Rasmussen even researched the story and
Speaker 1: check the weather for September eighth, nineteen eighty five, No
Speaker 1: big temperature drop occurred. Was the power structure of the
Speaker 1: art world really deaf to the protests of so many women?
Speaker 1: Did white men hold so much power that they can
Speaker 1: continually change their story and still expect everyone to take
Speaker 1: their word for it. Did Carl's calling it an accident
Speaker 1: after twenty years somehow make the art world think that
Speaker 1: it was outside of or above the problem of domestic violence?
Speaker 1: Did we think we were that different from everyone else? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you have an inda, I do okay. Doctor Kelly
Speaker 1: Morgan is a scholar turned curator who also had a
Speaker 1: dramatic departure from her job. I wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: her because she and I had pretty much opposite instincts
Speaker 1: about how to handle things. When it all went down
Speaker 1: for me in twenty eighteen, My first instinct was silence,
Speaker 1: and that was pretty much the only thing me and
Speaker 1: the museum agreed upon. Hence the NDA, which for those
Speaker 1: listeners without one, is a non disclosure agreement. Another method
Speaker 1: of procuring silence. What do you think breaking your silence
Speaker 1: would mean having the power that you have in the
Speaker 1: field and the reverence that you have in the field.
Speaker 1: Part of my silence in the wake of being fired
Speaker 1: was I didn't know how to actually tell the story.
Speaker 1: And part of it is fear that people would come
Speaker 1: at me in a variety of ways, financial or reputational.
Speaker 1: My first worry was money, how would I pay my bills?
Speaker 1: As for the reputational stuff, I knew what could happen
Speaker 1: to strong willed women in the press. Kelly also felt
Speaker 1: the fear, but silence was not her play. I asked
Speaker 1: her to tell me what happened that led up to
Speaker 1: her dramatic exit from the Newfield's Museum in Indiana. It
Speaker 1: was a lot of things, but the tipping point came
Speaker 1: at an acquisitions meeting, the meeting during which the curators
Speaker 1: present works of art that they think are good enough
Speaker 1: to display and save. In these meetings, curators typically make
Speaker 1: a deeply researched presentation on the artist's work to a
Speaker 1: committee of collectors and philanthropists whose job it is is
Speaker 1: to provide the funds for the purchase. So we get
Speaker 1: to this meeting. The vase has Colin Kaepernick on one side,
Speaker 1: John Brown on the other side. Is called the Expulsion
Speaker 1: of Colin Kaepernick, and we're discussing it, and we has
Speaker 1: a very like a high level donor, and he just
Speaker 1: goes on this rant about, you know, Colin Kaepernick was
Speaker 1: wrong and African Americans don't use their money correctly, and
Speaker 1: just like all of the races, neoliberal capitalist bullshit. So
Speaker 1: I get up and walk out of the room. And
Speaker 1: then the subsequent response, you know, from leadership, because he
Speaker 1: was such a high level donor, was that I had
Speaker 1: just acted unprofessionally. In two decades of museum work, I
Speaker 1: have never seen a curator walk out of a meeting
Speaker 1: with trustees. I can't lie. I kind of wish I
Speaker 1: had been there to watch Kelly's rebellion. Ultimately, she decided
Speaker 1: that walking out wasn't enough, so she wrote an essay
Speaker 1: about racism in art museums. The essay pretty much discusses
Speaker 1: the nature of white supremacy culture as I've experienced and
Speaker 1: sit in art museums and then before she could get fired,
Speaker 1: she sent her boss, as well as all of her
Speaker 1: colleagues and the local press, a scathing resignation letter that
Speaker 1: called out the racism she'd been experiencing on the daily.
Speaker 1: I went to the press because I was just kind
Speaker 1: of sick and tired, you know, of how bad things
Speaker 1: were going. And it was something that happens to all
Speaker 1: museum professionals to some degree, whether it's class discrimination, gender discrimination,
Speaker 1: racial sexual discrimination. There's a history, there's a tradition, and
Speaker 1: I kept thinking that eventually I would get some like
Speaker 1: Ceason desist letter. She never did get a season desist,
Speaker 1: but what did come was a barrage of casual slander
Speaker 1: and some very real death threats. And there's a very
Speaker 1: prominent arts leader who has no problem, you know, telling anybody,
Speaker 1: like at a party or a dinner or like you know,
Speaker 1: on a zoom call or whatever, that he feels like
Speaker 1: I desire to be shout at a vase, and that
Speaker 1: his several people call, let's say, are you aware you
Speaker 1: know that this person is like saying this stuff for us?
Speaker 1: And yeah, I know. I envy Kelly's courage and ability
Speaker 1: to speak freely about her experience, though it pains me
Speaker 1: deeply that she has such stories to tell. We all
Speaker 1: know that speaking up has real consequences. It's why so
Speaker 1: many victims of domestic violence stay quiet. It's why the
Speaker 1: Gorilla Girls are anonymous. But there's a difference between those
Speaker 1: who are silenced and those who choose to stay silent.
Speaker 1: And by now it's clear that the silence that calls
Speaker 1: me the most is carl Andres. He didn't take the stand,
Speaker 1: He didn't provide an explanation to honest family or her friends.
Speaker 1: He had no words for the community. He was such
Speaker 1: a prominent member of a community torn apart by what happened.
Speaker 1: The records of the trial were permanently sealed, and according
Speaker 1: to Robert Catz, the strategy was to maintain this silence
Speaker 1: moving forward toward the end of Naked by the Window.
Speaker 1: He wrote quote. Sometime after the trial, a meeting was
Speaker 1: held to the Paula. Cooper Gallery, where it was decided
Speaker 1: that no one among the participants would ever again speak
Speaker 1: of the case. So, in a last ditch effort to
Speaker 1: see if we could crack the wall of silence, my
Speaker 1: producer suggested we go to Carl Andre's apartment to see
Speaker 1: if he'd talked to us face to face. It's a
Speaker 1: huge building and it's about fifteen floors higher than any
Speaker 1: other building. Yes, it's around much taller than it's neighbors.
Speaker 1: It's really disturbing how high it is. All right, revolving
Speaker 1: door here, We got hi? How are you? That's next
Speaker 1: time on Death of an Artist. Death of an Artist
Speaker 1: is a co production between Pushkin Industries, Something Else and
Speaker 1: Sony Music Entertainment. Written and hosted by me Helen Muldsworth.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Lizzie Jacobs, Tom kinig Leetel Mulad, Jacob
Speaker 1: Weisberg and Lucas Werner. Produced by Maria Luisa Tucker, editing
Speaker 1: by Lizzie Jacobs. Our managing producer is Jacob Smith. Associate
Speaker 1: producers are Pooge Rue and Eloise Linton. Additional production helped
Speaker 1: by Tally Abacassas. Voice acting by Nick Barrain. Anna Mendieta's
Speaker 1: quotes were read by Tanya Brigera, engineered by Sam Bare,
Speaker 1: fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. Our theme song is
Speaker 1: by Pooge Rue. If you love this show, consider subscribing
Speaker 1: to Pushkin Plus to listen early add free and get
Speaker 1: exclusive bonus content. Look for the Pushkin Plus channel on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm. Find more great
Speaker 1: podcasts from Sonymusic Entertainment at sonymusic dot com. Backslash Podcasts