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The installation piece "MOVE?" by artist Pat Ward is in the far end of Zilkha’s main gallery.

One hundred-ninety trophies adorn Carl Pope’s installation at the "Black and Blue" exhibit.

"Black and Blue," currently featured at the Zilkha Gallery, is the product of a group of artists responding to police brutality. Interestingly, the day the show opened, there was some controversy about the content of the exhibit’s message.

Carl Pope, the creator of the installation, acquired 190 trophies for his exhibit. He changed the lettering on them so that they became medals of honor for police beatings, shootings or killings. They refer to actual incidents that took place in New York’s black community between 1949 and 1994. The trophies span that time period, and Pope tried to have the style of each trophy correspond to the year of the event.

"I really liked the trophy piece," said Sarah Tew ’01. "I thought it connected the violence to a sport like hunting."

Some, however, criticized the exhibit’s arrangement.

"In some of those incidents the police were actually justified and acted in self-defense," said Andrew Hazkett ’93 at the gallery opening.  "This piece just lumps [all the incidents] together. There can be no dialogue."

Brad McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry conceived "Witness: Perspectives on Police Violence" in 1997 following the beating and torture of Abner Louima in the Seventieth Precinct station. They interviewed the families of victims, eyewitnesses and activists against police brutality. They also interviewed police officers, and because violent officers tended not to speak, they taped only non-violent officers. They mounted speakers on black cast-iron call boxes and placed them in various locations around the city.  

In Zilkha, McCallum and Tarry covered the glass windows of a small hallway with black plastic and at the other end, they set up slides and photographs of victims and the locations where police violence took place.

"The room where you hear voices touched my core," said Emily Chenette ’03. "[The hallway] looked like a deserted street."

David Thorne titled his piece "Ready to Start Overnights Right Away," which were words from a 1994 memo President Clinton wrote opening the Lincoln Bedroom to guests as a fundraiser. At around the same time, Park Police in Washington D.C. shot Marcelino Corniel, a black man who lived across the street from the White House. Thorne connects these two events in his piece and explores the unfairness of privilege.  Thorne wrote a short fairy tale about Slumberland, a place where some sleep well and others are put to sleep, and put up a catalog photo of a person clutching his or her pillow. On an actual pillow, he wrote the names of some of the people who had slept in the Lincoln Bedroom, including Steven Spielberg, Jane Fonda and George Bush.

"[This show] is biased," Hazkett said. "What about all the people who were saved by the police?"

In "Historical Corrections," Dread Scott intended to point out that the number of recent police killings exceeds the number of lynchings during the heyday of lynching.

"The only difference is who is the perpetrator," Scott said, indicating the backdrop photo of civilians smiling and surrounding a burnt body. All the while, the sound of automated billy clubs hitting model black heads beat incessantly.

"We were standing in the room and that sound kept repeating," Tew said. "It’s symbolic of how this is still going on."

After the 1985 police bombing of a house in Philadelphia, Pat Ward Williams put together "MOVE?" The installation consisted of three painted black flats representing walls and displaying coroner’s reports and the eyewitness account of a 9-year-old boy who was the only survivor in his family. In addition, official police reports and diagrams of bodies with missing body parts and saw lines were also displayed.  

In the center is an arm chair beside a table with a lamp and flowers, inviting one to sit down and face the TV, which is showing a video of coverage by a local station. In that comfortable seat, one is surrounded on all sides by horrific reports of the tragedy.

"All the exhibits that I saw demonstrated excessive force and malicious intent on the part of the police," said Elena Jaime ’02. "It didn’t seem at all justified."

This exhibit is as political as it is artistic. Many students and visitors who had just come to Zilkha for the gallery opening went on to join the march down the Middletown Police Station
in protest to police brutality.

"I left crying, " Chenette said. "I passed out flyers to people on my floor. I think people should see it no matter what their view."

Regardless of political views regarding police brutality, "Black and Blue" is an exhibit not to be missed. It will be in the main gallery of Zilkha through Dec.10.