I swear I did not know about this when I put up the last Jack Smith/Flaming Creatures post.
The Central Utah Arts Center has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Ephraim in Sanpete County and its mayor, alleging official censorship and discrimination. CUAC was evicted last summer from the city-owned building it had restored and occupied for nearly two decades, and its city funding and school-based programs were canceled after various public officials complained about offensive content in at least two art exhibitions.
The one that started the censor ball rolling, it seems, was a 2011 traveling exhibition which included Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures. In CUAC's court complaint, they quote an email where the mayor of Ephraim calls the showing not "Sanpete appropriate." The City Manager and Economic Development Director of the City then emailed "to share my disgust with the 'art' on view." "I know there are places in the world where smut like this is tolerated but the last place I expected to see it was in Ephraim." And there it was!
The city had filed suit against CUAC after evicting them, and approved turning the building over to a newly formed arts group, one which promised not to show "abstract 'contemporary art' that many residents found esoteric and difficult to understand."
CUAC is seeking damages, restitution, and attorneys fees, as well as to be reinstated in its former premises. This, even though the organization and its director Adam Bateman have fled to that notorious den of permissiveness, Salt Lake City.
Ephraim art center founder says censorship behind eviction [sltrib via artforum]
