The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography has created a new exhibit entitled “American Epidemic: Guns in the United States.” This exhibit is receiving funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and is set to run in February 2022.
The exhibit will feature the works of 10 different artists who will “examine the role guns play in structural violence, poverty, systemic racism, and an increasingly militarized police force.”
From the Museum of Contemporary Photography:
In American Epidemic: Guns in the United States, ten artists examine the role guns play in structural violence, poverty, systemic racism, and an increasingly militarized police force. Using the photographic medium, these artists provide a nuanced exploration of the way in which guns are yielded in this country, including the politicization of trauma, public mourning (and the rote political refrain of “thoughts and prayers” in response to gun violence), and a host of other issues laid bare by this uniquely American plight.
Featuring work by Carolyn Drake, Nancy Floyd, Stephen Foster, Andres Gonzalez, Félix González-Torres, Deborah Luster, Zora J Murff, Renée Stout, and Hank Willis Thomas and Kambui Olujimi, American Epidemic not only explores the complex array of issues that arise with the increased presence of guns in American society, but advocates for an intersectional understanding of how gender, race, capitalism, and militarism affect the larger conversation around gun control in this country.
Museum curator Karen Irvine said that the museum has been actively working on this exhibit for over 3-years and that the museum has a “Social Justice-focused mission.” Irvine told the Chicago Reader that creating this exhibit now was extremely pressing because Covid-19 caused people to stock up on guns and ammo or as she put it “compiling arsenals.”
Op-ed writer for the Chicago Reader, Deanna Isaacs, who wrote the piece about the exhibit had left the exhibit with one question in mind “Why not just get rid of guns? Why not make them, like other destructive explosive devices, illegal?”
This exhibit is just gun-grabber showmanship at its finest. From the very start, the exhibit is called the “American Epidemic: Guns in the United States,” this name carries the implication that gun ownership and firearms, in general, are bad things. The museum makes no effort to hide this implication either, this is a political exhibit that intends to argue in favor of tighter gun regulations and more gun control.
This exhibit was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, this means your tax dollars are paying for it. This is nothing new though, as the art scene is rife with liberal messaging that is tantamount to propaganda.
This is an anti-gun exhibit, in an anti-gun museum, in an anti-gun city, and it is all funded through an anti-gun organization that you help pay for.
