Teacher’s Dismissal Paints Ugly Picture of Politics of Art

In recent years, we’ve all been reminded there’s such a thing as the politics of art.

There was the national controversy over the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit. There was the wrangling over federal funding of certain art projects, a dispute that eventually took the head of John E. Frohnmayer, then head of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Two years ago in Orange County, officials at Fullerton’s Muckenthaler Cultural Center removed a photograph depicting a nude John Lennon embracing Yoko Ono. The curator quit over that one.

So art obviously does more than inspire. It can inflame.

These days, you’ll never convince Adi Yekutieli, a bushy-haired, 35-year-old father of two, that he isn’t a casualty of the politics of art. He also knows he won’t be able to prove it, which only adds to his frustration.

Until this semester, Yekutieli had been an art instructor at the 400-student Orange County High School for the Arts, tucked into the 2,200-student campus of Los Alamitos High School. The Los Alamitos district is considered one of Orange County’s best, and the arts school--a training ground for students with either potential or proven talent in dance, painting, music, theater and the visual arts--draws applicants from both Orange and Los Angeles counties.

Last May, the school found itself in the middle of what schools dread the most--adverse publicity--when one of Yekutieli’s students, Letitia Houston, painted a scene of two women embracing. The painting was part of a class project and was to be shown at an exhibit along with works by her classmates.

A written “statement of intent” by Houston accompanied the painting and included thoughts on her own lesbianism.

School officials originally refused to let Houston exhibit her artwork, but as reported at the time, school officials adamantly denied that censorship was the issue. They said that Houston’s work was turned in late and that her statement strayed from her original theme of her thoughts on Catholicism.

But after the ensuing firestorm and threatened demonstrations that would have intensified the publicity, school officials relented and let Houston display her painting. Along the way, Yekutieli had weighed in on Houston’s behalf.

End of story. Or is it?

Citing budgetary constraints and an expected drop-off in enrollments for his classes, school officials notified Yekutieli before this school year that his position was being eliminated.

“I’m immensely irritated because I realize I’ve been made the scapegoat for this whole event,” Yekutieli said. “I think they’re punishing the whole system because it basically means that they filter out anybody who questions anything, and you will have students who will never question anything and teachers who don’t encourage students to question anything.”

Ralph Opacic, executive director of the arts school, said that eliminating Yekutieli’s position had nothing to do with the Letitia Houston controversy. Opacic also reiterated Thursday that the original controversy had nothing to do with Houston’s subject matter.

Yekutieli disputed that, saying Houston told him that school officials had specifically asked her to change language relating to lesbianism.

If he weren’t being made the scapegoat, Yekutieli said, he could have been assigned to other classes. Another art instructor was hired after he was dismissed, he said. Besides, he added, other classes have fewer students than his.

Relocating Yekutieli would have come at the expense of more-experienced teachers, Opacic said--another point that Yekutieli disputed. The administrator also said the only new person hired this semester was to teach photography.

Yekutieli also disputed that, and round and round it goes.

So was Yekutieli wronged or not?

I know you would like a conclusion to all this, but I’m no mind reader. I don’t know whether school officials got steamed about the bad publicity and consciously or subconsciously took it out on Yekutieli.

But if it’s true that Houston was told flat-out that she had to change her references to lesbianism, as Yekutieli asserts, it’s not a very convincing response to say that was only done because she had strayed from her original theme.

That sounds more like a rationalization than anything else.

And if that peg of the school’s story is wobbly . . .

Well, I guess we’ll never know, huh?

Or could it be that censorship, like art itself, is in the eye of the beholder?