Constitutional Law

Artwork with Confederate flag removed from Ga. exhibit

By By The Associated Press

OAKWOOD, Ga. ? A college president says she ordered an instructor's painting removed from a faculty art exhibit amid controversy about the piece, which features a Confederate flag.

The flag is superimposed on images that include a hanged black man and a hooded Ku Klux Klansman, the Athens Banner-Herald reported.

Gainesville State College President Martha Nesbitt said in a news release that she had to consider the impact on the reputation of the school.

Athens artist Stan Bermudez, who created the piece, says the painting was ordered removed Jan. 25, two weeks after it went on display in the faculty art show, which ended Feb. 4.

It was also around the same time that retired Air Force Maj. Arnold Huskins of Grovetown, Ga., objected to the artwork on a website devoted to Southern heritage, Bermudez said. Huskins also urged readers of the site to contact the college president.

"I hate to see anyone malign or cast dispersion (sic) on the flags of soldiers ? which the Confederate flag is ? the flag of Southern soldiers," Huskins told the newspaper Feb. 3 in an e-mail.

"Mr. Bermudez's work would not have been controversial if he had not solely featured the Confederate flag in association with the atrocities of the past," he wrote. "Unfortunately, the Klan carries the U.S. and Protestant Christian flag as well, but one wonders why Mr. Bermudez did not include these flags in his artwork."

Bermudez told the newspaper the painting represents some of the feelings he associates with the Confederate flag.

Full post as published by First Amendment Center on February 07, 2011 (boomark / email).