This week, the Smithsonian Institution's board of regents met to announce the results of a special outside committee brought in to review the turmoil that has roiled the institution since secretary G. Wayne Clough ordered the removal of a video by David Wojnarowicz from the National Portrait Gallery. In essence, the "forward looking review" amounted to a mild rebuke of Clough's decision to remove the work — the result of pressure from right-wing politicians and conservative activist
groups — while reaffirming that Clough is the right man to lead the Smithsonian.

The outside three-person panel, assembled as the Smithsonian as protests against Clough's decision escalated, consisted of National Gallery of Art director Earl A. Powell III, political analyst and former presidential adviser David Gergen, and John W. McCarter, president of Chicago's Field Museum. They were tasked with reviewing the background of the controversy, examining the institution's operations, and providing "best practices" advice about how to deal with hot-button subject matter in the future.

The resulting six-page report is not exactly gripping reading. A surprising amount of stress is placed on matters of technology, apparently stemming from the notion that the uproar has less to do with substantial issues, and more to do with badly handling the "increased speed of communication in a digital world," this being one of the headline issues the reviewers were tasked with investigating. Thus, one of the "recommendations" reads: "The Smithsonian should use the Internet during exhibitions to facilitate discussion of conflicts, debates, disagreements, and other views as a way of 'listening' to Smithsonian audiences and informing institutional responses." The weeks-long review concludes this point soberly by revealing, "Social networks are impactful, new ways of communicating."

More substantially, four initiatives are put forth: the panel endorses Clough's decision to form a Directors Advisory Group to help him respond to hot-button issues; recommends that various Smithsonian museum directors make an effort to do outreach to the "broad museum community to familiarize them with the Smithsonian"; suggests the creation of a Smithsonian Ombudsman "to ensure that a broad range of opinion is available to the Secretary"; and proposes the creation of "a summer executive education institute for curators and directors to discuss case studies applicable to Smithsonian exhibition planning and implementation."

For Clough, the most damning line of the special report is undoubtedly the one outlining a future process for dealing with controversies. "In the absence of actual error," it says, "changes to exhibitions should not be made once an exhibition opens without meaningful consultation with the curator, director, Secretary, and the leadership of the Board of Regents." Essentially, the report suggests that the secretary's unilateral decision to pull Wojnarowicz's video was a bad idea, and should not be repeated. At a press conference following the regents' meeting, McCarter told reporters that including the video in the National Portrait Gallery "was not a mistake" on the curators' part — which seems to indicate that removing it was.  

Still, the press conference served as occasion to reiterate the institution's backing for Clough. "The secretary has enormous support from the regents," McCarter said.

The immediate reactions suggest that the report leaves the controversy undimmed. In a "Critic's Notebook" entry, L.A. Times art critic Christopher Knight argued that the board's logic led to one inevitable conclusion, given the acknowledged damage that the secretary's censorship has done to the Smithsonian: "uncensor the show."

Meanwhile right-wing pundit William Donohue of the Catholic League — who partly touched off the furor by condemning Wojnarowicz's video as "hate speech" — went on the offensive against the Smithsonian for not doing enough to specifically apologize to aggrieved Catholics.

Finally, William Dobbs of the group ART+ — which organized a protest of around 30 people in front of the Smithsonian's Castle building during the January 1st meeting — reiterated his case against the secretary to ARTINFO: "Clough made a disastrous decision and then did even more damage with his handling of it over the last two months. The regents are desperately trying to have it both ways — grudgingly admitting something is rotten but backing the man responsible for the censorship. Yet the video has been 'disappeared' without a trace, as if it was never there; the only truly honorable thing to do is put it back immediately."

"For the good of the Smithsonian Clough must go," Dobbs concluded.

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