A few weeks ago the New Yorker’s art critic Peter Schjeldahl sounded dismayed at the inclusion of the Unabomber’s shack in the New Museum’s yawnfest that is “After Nature:”
…Emotional reach exceeds formal grasp throughout the show, and certain melodramatic lurches fail entirely. (I don’t care what Robert Kusmirowski intends by his painstaking reconstruction of the Una-bomber Ted Kaczynski’s cabin; it’s dumb.)…
And now the Newseum in DC has upstaged the New York museum by displaying the real Montana cabin (courtesy the FBI) for their “G-Men and Journalists” exhibition.
The problem is the Kaczynski ain’t too happy about it and wrote a handwritten letter to a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals complaining that about it.
According to the Washington Post:
Kaczynski, who is imprisoned in a federal facility in Florence, Colo., said he learned of the cabin’s use when he saw it in an advertisement for the Newseum in The Washington Post…
“I recently received a page from the Washington Post, June 19, 2008, page A9. This comprises a full-page, full-color advertisement that features my cabin, which is being exhibited publicly at something called a ‘Newseum,’ ” Kaczynski wrote, using careful printing. “Since the advertisement states that the cabin is ‘FROM FBI VAULT,’ it is clear that the government is responsible for the public exhibition of the cabin. This has obvious relevance to the victims’ objection to publicity connected with the Unabom case.”
The whole bizarre letter is available via SmokingGun.com.
In the current museum climate where museums whore themselves out for media attention it would’ve fit right into the New Museum’s mission (oh wait, they dont’ really have one anymore)…then again Kaczynski isn’t exactly younger than Jesus.
Photo caption: The infamous cabin at DC’s Newseum
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