Etching on view at National Museum of Women in the Arts depicts Joe Biden as leader of “witch hunt” vs. Anita Hill.
On view mere blocks from the White House, the artwork by Sue Coe takes the presidential candidate and his Senate colleagues to task weeks before Election Day.
From behind a table, a row of white men in suits presides over ominous proceedings, as a witch flies overhead with a black cat on her broomstick. In the foreground, four men snap photos of a black woman, her hands bound behind her back as she burns at the stake. Everything about the etching is troubling. The all-caps headline of a New York Post in the bottom left corner says it all: “I’d like to thank Amerikkka.”
British-American artist Sue Coe’s copper plate etching “Anita Hill” (1992) is currently on view at Washington’s National Museum of Women in the Arts in an installation of the museum’s permanent collection on its third floor. Its message is clear. This was a witch hunt against Hill, who accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.
Sue Coe. “Untitled (Anita Hill Trial).” 1992. Etching on paper. Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Name plates identify the senators leading the charge (left to right): (John Dan)forth (R-Mo.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), Joe Biden (D-Del), Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Howell Heflin (D-Ala.), and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).
If this was Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” Biden would occupy the central, Jesus position; he is leading the show, although neither he nor his colleagues can be bothered to even look at the woman being martyred—so to speak—below.
The work compares the 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing “and surrounding media frenzy to a modern-day witch trial by portraying Hill burning at the stake while looking hauntingly at the viewer,” per the NMWA label. I’d add that a photographer appears poised to capture the viewer’s picture, a kind of warning that implicates those who see the etching and threatens to document their reactions too for posterity.
Both the Brooklyn Museum and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts own versions of this etching, but neither, per their sites, is currently displaying it. The Brooklyn Museum website states that the work evokes 14th to 19th century witch hunts. “The accusatory and disbelieving tone of both the committee and the media effectively put Hill, not Thomas, on trial,” it adds.
Seeing the work last week, and thinking about it since, I noted with interest that the museum is displaying a bold indictment of the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, mere months before Election Day. Is it appropriate for a museum to appear to put its finger on the scales? And knowing an artwork on view a few blocks from the White House was going to attack a frontrunner for the U.S. presidency, who would have guessed it would go after Biden rather than Trump?
It turns out that the etching first went on view at National Museum of Women in the Arts in January 2019, as part of a thematic installation of the permanent collection on the third floor that rotates every two years. The gallery where it now hangs responds to the theme “Rebels with a Cause.”
“All of the artworks in the space were selected to reflect upon how women artists throughout the history of art have distinguished themselves by persistently and successfully working within a system that has tried to suppress them,” said Kathryn Wat, NMWA chief curator and deputy director for art, programs, and public engagement.
“Artists presented in this gallery communicate in ways that are alternately subtle, witty, and, in the case of Coe, fierce,” she added.
The curators selected the print in question, “because its subject is a woman who, similar to all of the artists represented in the gallery, blazed a trail and propelled change. Our museum shares the work of women artists through time and from around the world,” Wat added.
I asked the museum to what extent arts institutions ought to have a role in engaging with politics of the day, particularly in an election year.
“Visitors experience artists’ richly-varied ideas and viewpoints and perceive their ingenuity, insight, and strength,” Wat said. “Every day, our museum seeks to illuminate the critical and central place of women in all human endeavors, be they creative, scientific, spiritual, social, or political.”
Thanks for this informative piece, especially the background of the exhibition's timing.