Who knew that in the age of America First, the greatest threat to Hispanic communities in the United States wasn’t marauding bands of ICE agents wielding mass deportation orders or the construction of a border wall? No, the scourge is Art.
That’s The Scrapbook’s takeaway from the news this week that a small art gallery called PSSST had been driven out of the hardscrabble Los Angeles area called Boyle Heights. PSSST, you see, was one of several art galleries making insidious inroads into the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. The nonprofit galleristas thought they were bringing welcome Culture to an underserved area; the locals saw them as the thin-wedge of Anglo infiltration, the shock troops of gentrification.
It’s an old story: First come the art galleries and, before you know it, the local bodega has been replaced with an artisanal boucherie selling acorn-fed ibérico ham for $15 an ounce.
And so the neighborhood organized, forming groups such as the Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement. They picketed the galleries; they confronted patrons arriving for show openings with shouts of “Get out!”—well, actually, “Fuera!” Parties had to be canceled. Canapés and Chardonnay went to waste. Donors were rattled.
Other efforts at bringing Art to Boyle Heights have met with similar resistance. As the Guardian reported last April, “An opera company which tried to stage a performance at the [neighborhood’s Hollenbeck Park] was drowned out by shouts, whistles and a brass band.” When the opera company’s music director tried to talk to the woman organizing the protest, he was told, “This is not a park for white people. You are white people.”
Given the contentious atmosphere, it’s no wonder PSSST is packing up its easels. But rather than expressing defiance, the gallery organizers issued a rather pathetic statement, whining on about how theirs had been an effort to democratize art given that art “institutions privilege the already privileged.” They also declared that art is about “community,” never mind that the Boyle Heights community wasn’t interested. They even said something about how it was a mischaracterization that they were “fundamentally in opposition with the varied intersectional communities we aimed to support.”
Contrast the mewling mush of “varied intersectional communities” with the anti-gringo movement’s memorable slogan, spray-painted on one of the galleries: “F— White Art.” No wonder PSSST lost the struggle.
One can understand the feelings of those who having lived for some time in a neighborhood wish to see it retain its character. But The Scrapbook can’t help but note the sad irony of an immigrant community—who should be in favor of the free movement of peoples, after all—dead set against people of a different ethnicity immigrating into their neighborhood.
