The National Gallery Has Been Invaded by Suspicious Unclothed Foreign Art

This Washington Post story begins “Washington is a town filled with boobs.” This sentence refers to unclothed statuary. However, it is true in other ways. Authors Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts must have enjoyed writing it.

Robert Hurt, visited the National Gallery of Art ten years ago while in town for a Promise Keepers meeting. He was extremely surprised to find our nation’s gallery liberally stocked with naked statues. Nearly 20 percent of the art in America’s National Gallery–nekkid! Why, he’d never heard of such a thing.

Luckily Hurt is a delegate to the Texas GOP convention. He knew what to do: Give this suspicious foreign statuary a hard smackdown in the party platform. “You don’t have nude art on your front porch,” he argued. “You possibly don’t have nude art in your living rooms. So why is it important to have that in the common places of Washington, D.C.?”

Good point. The National Gallery is the front porch of America. Why should that sacred place contain anything more than a porch swing, a welcome mat, and maybe a couple of potted plants? Note that I do say “maybe.” We must be careful about those plants. They should be familiar plants. It would be a terrible shame if the National Gallery of Art contained anything at all to shock or surprise the uneducated, who are the most purely American of us all.

Alas, Mr. Hurt’s proposal did not make it in. He was similarly unsuccessful with his suggestion that Presidential spouses should have term limits. I think this was a mistake. No one should be forced to be married to a President for more than eight years.

(Via Making Light.)