Don Lee - The Collective

“You won’t die alone, Joshua. I’ll always be around. So will Jessica.”

“You say that now, but you can’t guarantee it. You guys have been the only true friends I’ve ever had, but sometimes I’ve felt I had to buy your friendship.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If I didn’t have this house, would you — or anyone else here, what’s left of the 3AC — be hanging out with me at all?”

“That’s an absurd thing to ask.”

“Is it? I don’t know,” Joshua said. He finished the rest of the kalbi and chucked the bones over the crocuses into the shrubs. “Sometimes I’m just barely hanging on, you know. Just barely hanging on. And I’m beginning to feel there’s only so much more I can do to keep us together.”

The second floor of the City Hall Annex housed several municipal offices that encircled Gallery 57, including the Animal Commission, which issued dog licenses. On Monday, one of the clerks who worked at the commission, Maryanne Costa, called Councilman Vivaldo Barboza, a fellow Portuguese American parishioner at St. Anthony’s Church, and complained about the sculptures to him. The mannequins were still sequestered behind the temporary partitions and draped by sheets, but Mrs. Costa, curious about the exhibition, had availed herself of a sneak peek, and had been appalled.

Vivaldo Barboza had been on the City Council for four years. Campaigning on an unimaginative platform of quality-of-life (noise abatement) and traffic (on-street parking) issues, he had been, to everyone’s surprise, elected to two terms, and was now the chair of the Public Safety Committee. He went to examine the sculptures in Gallery 57 himself and, equally horrified and disgusted, took matters into his own hands.

He bore down on the erections with his full weight and broke them off the Bruce Lee and Charlie Chan mannequins. He tried to pry the vulva off Suzie Wong as well, but couldn’t gain purchase on it enough to tear it off, so he simply yanked closed the horizontal zipper, the one-yuan coin plinking away to recesses unknown, never to be found again. He hid the erections underneath his suit coat and marched around the corner to City Hall, straight into the city manager’s office.

In Cambridge, the nine members of the City Council were elected at-large through a proportional electoral process, and the members themselves appointed a mayor and vice mayor from the council, but the city manager, John Toomey, was the true chief executive of the city, with the power to enforce laws and ordinances and hire and fire employees.

Barboza dumped the erections on Toomey’s desk and demanded that the exhibition be dismantled at once. Toomey — amused rather than outraged, which infuriated Barboza — told him that it was neither the city manager’s responsibility nor purview to decide what was or wasn’t art, and Barboza would have to take his grievances elsewhere.

It was two p.m. From January until June, the City Council met on the first Monday of each month at five-thirty, and Barboza entered a last-minute emergency item to that evening’s agenda. At the meeting, he summoned the director of Gallery 57 and the members of the Cambridge Arts Council (only two of three could appear on such short notice), and asked them to account for themselves. How could they have sponsored such an offensive and obscene exhibition? How could they justify showing such rubbish in a public space? What in the world had they been thinking? Never mind what they owed their constituents; they had left the city vulnerable to a sexual harassment suit by its workers, and by God he wouldn’t blame them one bit if they filed one.

“This is not art,” he said. “This is pornography.”

The council recessed the meeting so all the members could read Jessica’s artist statement — about addressing issues of cultural appropriation, ethnicity, identity, sexuality, and stereotypes in media representations of Asian Americans — and go to Gallery 57 to view the exhibition, replete with the lights. Two councilmen held the erections in place on the mannequins, and there were some oohs and ahs when they discovered that the pieces glowed in the dark and there were hidden caches of miniature sculptures in the heads. They resumed the meeting in City Hall, and Barboza called for the Gallery 57 director and Arts Council members’ immediate resignations. They refused, so Barboza submitted two proposals: the first to hold a public hearing to investigate the Arts Council’s selection process, the second to include, on all future arts juries, a councilperson and a representative of the clergy. The first proposal was accepted. The second — only the motion about a councilperson, the stipulation about the clergy roundly dismissed — was tabled, pending review. Barboza then asked for an injunction to cancel all current and future exhibitions in Gallery 57 until the hearing was held and resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. The injunction divided the City Council, but ultimately was shot down. The show could go on, with a few caveats.

“There need to be certain adjustments,” the Gallery 57 director, Gustaaf Dekker, told us that night in our living room.

“What adjustments?” Jessica asked.

“In order for the exhibit to proceed,” Dekker told her, “they want the temporary partitions to be permanent, so people who are going to get their dog licenses won’t see it unless they intend to, and they want signs posted.” He pulled out a sheet of paper and read: “ ‘The works in this exhibition address provocative issues of sexuality and identity. To be specific, this exhibition contains explicit displays and symbols depicting genitalia, and these objects may be offensive to some viewers. Please use discretion in entering the exhibit space and viewing the artwork. Because of the sensitive nature of the exhibit, it is not recommended for viewing by minors.’ ”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jessica said.

“That’s blatant censorship,” Joshua said.

“There’s a last little bit, a disclaimer of sorts,” Dekker said. “ ‘The City Council is not responsible for the contents of this exhibition and in no way endorses it.’ ”

“What kind of chickenshit nonsense is that?” Joshua asked.

“I’m not going to do it,” Jessica said. “I won’t accept it. It’s complete bullshit. Why am I the one who has to compromise? This asshole decides he’s the guardian of morality for the city, and he vandalizes my exhibit, yet he’s allowed to get away with it without any punishment? If anyone walked into a gallery or museum and defaced the art, they’d get arrested. Why hasn’t this guy been arrested?”

“I’m behind you one hundred percent,” Dekker said. “All the members of the Arts Council are, too. We’ll stand by you, whatever you want to do. It’s tragic and reprehensible, that’s what it is, this whole thing. Tragic.”

He bowed his head, as if to solemnize the depths of the tragedy. Tall, with a trim, muscular frame, Dekker had thinning curly blond hair, and there was a bald spot beginning to form on top of his head. He was Dutch, born in Curaçao and raised in Maastricht, and he had come to the States because he had fathered two children with an American expatriate. He lived with her and the kids, but remained unmarried. Jessica had told Joshua and me that when Dekker was helping her move the mannequins from the Vernon Street Studios to Gallery 57, he had hit on her.

“But I wonder if this is not so onerous of a compromise,” Dekker said. “At least the mannequins would not have to be covered or altered in any way, and the exhibit could carry on as scheduled. That is, if you are able to repair and reinstall the sculptures by Friday. Do you think you can do that?”