I may have jumped the gun in as much as Bruce Stewart says that the entire situation was handled with calmness and diplomacy by the police and that it was his choice to not show the work that was a replica of a bomb. Seeing as how it might have hung next to his painting of a prosthetic leg, this would have been a double-whammy or at the very least, point-counterpoint.
And no matter how reasonable the police were, it still begs the question, who should censor what appears in an art gallery or what is delivered by a slam-poet or what we watch in the privacy of our own homes?
And when we, as artists, feel compelled to self-censor, what does this mean for the integrity of art?
