Removing Lennon Photo From Exhibit a Huge Mistake

Hats off to curator Norman Lloyd, whose intelligent curating would attempt to educate and revise the rigid images of a public that may in any event continue down the “heroic” road to cultural destitution.

Board chairwoman Beverly Gunter’s obtuse reading of the Lennon - Ono image is typical of those who reactively and unwisely attempt to remove from the public view anything that makes them uncomfortable or challenges their assumptions about the natural order of things.

Lennon’s respect for woman is profoundly heroic--that’s what makes the photograph so extraordinary, and what makes him a hero. If we allow trustees and government representatives to make decisions like the one Gunter threatened, we lose all hope of revisioning our past or creating our future differently.

Art like the Lennon-Ono photograph in the hands of board trustees like Gunter threatens the very power of creation in the modern world. We must continue to fund art, and to invite a profusion of images to vie equally for our attention and instruction.

LORI MILLER, Laguna Hills