While doing research for a trip to Washington DC, I found out about this exhibit featured in the February issue of Smithsonian Magazine. I know next to nothing about hip hop culture, but I do know this: Spray-painting someone else’s property without their permission is vandalism, plain and simple. The exhibit, “Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture,” is now on display at the National Portrait Gallery and the curators clearly realize some people will question whether this is vandalism or art. This is how the magazine article begins:
While browsing the National Portrait Gallery this month, visitors initially might think that the museum walls have been defaced. But the four-foot-long graffiti murals that cover the corridors are actually part of “Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture,” marking the Smithsonian’s first commission of the underground street art—still widely regarded as vandalism. “We are not glorifying the illegal activity, but we are acknowledging the larger impact this street tradition has had in contemporary art,” says Frank H. Goodyear III, one of the exhibition’s curators.
The story goes on to reveal that two of the featured artists:
have both been spray-painting (or “tagging”) trains and bridges since they were teenagers. They boast quite the portfolio of street graffiti, or what Goodyear euphemistically calls their “noncommissioned works.” Hupp estimates that in his peak he tagged about 400 freight trains a year, and Conlon’s signature pieces, many of which feature TV’s “Simpsons” characters, can be seen around the country.
The exhibition website shows that some of the work is, indeed, vibrant and beautiful. But since we can safely assume that neither of the referenced artists owned the trains or bridges they “tagged,” is an exhibition at the Smithsonian an appropriate way to reward them or the “tagging” that goes on around this country?
