A Pope In Condoms? Milwaukee Museum Catching Flack Over Art

MILWAUKEE, Wisc.—For a state that couldn't even impeach its Tea Party-ish governor, Scott Walker, it seems to us that Milwaukeeans have a lot of gall complaining about a piece of art—but complaining, they are. It's a portrait (pictured), roughly seven feet tall and five feet wide, titled "Eggs Benedict," and it's done on transparent plexiglass so art lovers visiting the Milwaukee Art Museum, where it will become part of the permanent collection this fall, can view it from either the front or the back, and its subject is the recently retired Pope Benedict XVI. So what could be the problem? "This piece is made out of 17,000 nonlubricated condoms," artist Niki Johnson recently told WITI television in Milwaukee. "What I did was inter-stuffed them and folded them in order to create this tonal range." Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki blasted the museum's decision to acquire the piece, deeming the move "callous" and "insulting" and an example of "radical individualism," which he defined as "personal freedom that is exercised without a license [or] personal responsibility." And that's just one of the 200 or so complaints the museum has received since announcing the upcoming exhibit. "What's at play here is either an intentional attack on a faith tradition and its teachings or a publicity stunt for the artist," the archbishop's chief of staff Jerry Topczewski told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "And we would be opposed to any faith tradition or religious leader being attacked in such a way." Johnson has said that the piece was inspired by Pope Benedict's 2009 visit to Africa, where the pontiff equivocated about whether the use of condoms could help stem the high rate of HIV infection on the continent. Benedict gave an interview for the book Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times by German journalist Peter Seewald, where the Pope said, according to reporters Rachel Donadio and Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times, "condoms were not 'a real or moral solution' to the AIDS epidemic, adding, 'that can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.' But he also said that 'there may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility.'" And indeed, coming from a guy who never had sex (that we know of), that's quite an admission—if it weren't for the fact that condoms are a "real ... solution" to the spread of HIV for people and their partners who aren't tested regularly, and considering that the Bible doesn't mention condoms or birth control even once, it's a "moral" one as well, since less people would get sick and die a horrible death. Of course, that logic was lost on Listecki, who has a real problem with anything that challenges his belief system. "In our society, we have characterized 'truth' as whatever we want to make of it," Listecki wrote on his blog. (Yes, even archbishops can have blogs.) "Therefore, truth is only accountable to the individual. In that context, Bruce Jenner can be a woman this week, a man next week or a Labrador retriever the week after. Our NAACP director can be an African-American woman this week, a Native American the next and possibly an Asian, simply because she likes egg rolls. Would the art museum accept works that depicted various political leaders of our state in cow dung (a significant animal for Wisconsin)? Would they accept art—pick your favorite religious or historical figures—featuring them in various pornographic poses (which has happened in some international publications)? What about art featuring national or international popular social reconstructionists in a manner that would depict the opposite of what they represented, such as Gandhi [sic] sporting an Uzi, Lincoln in Klu Klux Klan [sic] garb or Hitler with a yarmulke reading the Torah, all in the name of art and beauty?" Yeah, we'll be waiting for God's wrath to be visited on Milwaukee because of the portrait—but we won't be holding our breaths.