Art shows at Salve

For the past 11 years, I have been director of the University Gallery at Salve Regina University, in Newport. Although I regularly reach out to The Journal’s visual-arts critic, Bill Van Siclen, your paper almost never responds nor reviews our exhibits.

Recently, I contacted van Siclen twice about sculptor Aurora Robson’s “Landmines” exhibit, on display Oct. 14 through Nov. 8, ( www.aurorarobson.com< http://www.aurorarobson.com>) in our newly renovated gallery. Robson, a highly regarded “eco-activist,” received attention from “Art In America,” which has a nine-page feature article on her work in its October 2009 issue. I received no response at all.

In fact, The Journal has missed most of the cutting-edge and established international artists who have exhibited at Salve Regina, such as Robert and Shana Park Harrison, Michael Hansel, Joan Backes, Denny Moers, April Greiman, Boston Font Bureau with Cyrus Highsmith, Willy Heeks, Jason Green, Renée Bissell, Sam Ames, Frank Poor, the late Brother Thomas, Harriet Brisson, Robert Rohm and Susannah Strong.

I specifically mention artist Susannah Strong’s provocative “domain” exhibit because of all the exhibits in the last decade, hers was one of the very few that Mr. Van Siclen came to Newport to review. However, because the artist was unfortunately delayed by 15 minutes, he departed and nothing was mentioned in The Journal.

As a rule, the university contacts The Journal well in advance of exhibit openings. In the case of the Robson exhibit, I sent Mr. Van Siclen an e-mail with the artist’s Web site, followed by a request to review the exhibit. The Journal travels to review exhibits at the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, the Rhode Island School of Design, Brown’s List Gallery, as well as the Newport Art Museum. Why not travel just a few more blocks to see Ms. Robson’s show?

When work of this caliber is available, I think the people of Rhode Island deserve to have an in-depth review. It’s way overdue.

Craig Coonrod

Newport

Editor’s note: Rhode Island, despite its small size, has one of the largest and most active visual-arts communities in the U.S. Providence alone has more than 30 galleries, museums and non-profit art spaces operating at any given time. As a result, it isn’t possible to cover every art exhibit or gallery on a regular basis. That said, many of the artists cited in the letter have exhibited –– and been reviewed in The Journal — at other venues around the state. They include Michael Hansel, Joan Backes, Willy Heeks, Denny Moers, Harriet Brisson, Robert Rohm and Susannah Strong, all of whom have received coverage (sometimes at considerable length) in The Journal’s pages. Strong’s “Domain” exhibit, by the way, was reviewed in The Journal. The review, titled “New at Salve,” appeared in the Nov. 27, 2003 edition of the paper’s Lifebeat Weekend section.

Guillotine helps no one

What would possess The Journal to report a story about an angry man with a revenge fantasy (“What he would do to child molester,” news, Nov. 2). Anyone who would spend $900 to construct a working guillotine has problems of his own, especially since the device is a symbol (one would hope) rather than a machine with practical application.

We all abhor child molesters; and we all have revenge fantasies. I just don’t expect to see them featured in a reasonable newspaper.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of this story is the man’s thinking that he is doing something to deter crimes against children. Were he not satisfying some need in himself, he’d have donated the money to a worthy cause.

And The Journal, of course, has encouraged potentially dangerous vigilante behavior. All we need is one missing kid, an unsuspecting neighbor with a criminal record, and a beer-guzzling angry mob.

Joseph C. Russo

Bristol

Church right about health care

Contrary to U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy’s contention, the Catholic Church recognizes that, while access to health care is a basic right, it should be guided by fundamental moral values (“Kennedy criticizes Catholic stand on health care,” news, Oct. 24).

The church will not accept universal health care that undermines the conscience and aggressively targets the family and Christian churches for destruction.

The driving force of health care should be the transcendent dignity of the human person. Abortion, euthanasia, contraception and other procedures or technologies that attack the sanctity of life, such as embryonic stem-cell research and in-vitro fertilization, are not health care and should not be covered using taxpayer dollars.

President Obama refuses to acknowledge this in any of his health-care proposals. Can we trust Obama when he claims that federal funds will not be used for abortion? History and economics tell us no!

The Netherlands, the most liberal country in Europe today, is the only country that refused to go along with the Nazi doctors in doing sterilizations and abortions. And yet, within two generations, as a result of socialized medicine, its doctors were turned into accountants focused on cost control, and now counsel assisted suicide, deny care to premature babies under 25 weeks, and euthanize children born disabled.

Socialized medicine is supposed to be for everyone. In reality, it denies care to those on the margins of life, such as the human fetus, those who are at the end of life and those who have complex diseases or chronic care.

No health-care plan should compel the people to pay for or participate in the destruction of human life. To preserve this principle is morally right and politically wise.

Paul Kokoski

Hamilton, Ontario

Think outside White House box

Anyone who knows more of Afghanistan than what one hears from White House press releases might not be so quick to give “Kudos to Kerry of Kabul” (editorial, Oct. 25).

While it is true some Americans may have preferred a unity government for Afghanistan to a run-off, most everyone acknowledges that President Ahmed Karzai had little to fear from a legitimate one-on-one election against Abdullah Abdullah. That is simply because of the numbers: There are more southern Pashtuns in Afghanistan than northern Tajiks. (And, actually, it was Karzai who pointed out to Kerry et. al. that the only option allowed by the Afghan constitution was a run-off election.)

As for Karzai: An Afghan friend — who, as a “northerner,” actually voted for Abdullah (I have a wonderful photo of him holding his beautiful 7-year-old daughter over the ballot box) — made an excellent analogy: Asking Karzai to run the just-liberated Afghanistan is like putting someone in an old car — Afghans relate to driving old cars! — and sending him to a distant location, then blaming him every time the engine has a problem.

The Journal is correct, though, in saying Afghan politics aren’t exactly those of Littleton, N.H. They’re more like those of Chicago, Ill.

(P.S. Abdullah, on Fox News Sunday Oct. 25, said he and Karzai did agree on one thing: America should do as Gen. Stanley McChrystal advises. That means President Obama cannot use Afghan political differences as an excuse to betray the women of Afghanistan!)

Karl F. Stephens, M.D.

Barrington