(CelebNMusic247-News) Wellesley College Complain about The Sleepwalker
Tony Matelli’s The Sleepwalker Scuplture Causes Controversy among Davis Museum at Wellesley College students!
Tony Matelli sculpture The Sleepwalker at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College is said to be too realistic-looking
Here is what’s being said:
The Davis Museum at Wellesley College is holding an exhibit of the work of sculptor Tony Matelli, and to help advertise the exhibit, the museum placed one of Matelli’s statues outside. Titled The Sleepwalker, the realistic-looking statue shows a bald man in his tighty-whities lumbering forward with his arms outstretched, his eyes closed, and his head lolling around in deep sleep. It’s funny and is, unsurprisingly, a big hit on Instagram. It’s also creating controversy, as reported by the Boston Globe, as many students object to the statue on the grounds that it’s scary. Zoe Magid, a junior at the university, started a Change.org petition demanding that the statue be moved inside the museum. “Within just a few hours of its outdoor installation, the highly lifelike sculpture by Tony Matelli, entitled ‘Sleepwalker,’ has become a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault for some members of our campus community,” she writes, adding variations of the wordtrigger two more times.
The museum director Lisa Fischman responded to the petition in an email that highlights how much the statue does not resemble a rapist who is coming to get you: “Arms outstretched, eyes closed, he appears vulnerable and unaware against the snowy backdrop of the space around him. He is not naked. He is profoundly passive. He is inert, as sculpture.”
This email did not placate the critics of the statue, who left dozens of comments, mostly written in feminist jargon. “Your claim that Sleepwalker is passive is spoken in privilege and without regard to the many students on this campus who have faced and survived assault, racism, and many other forms of violent oppression,” writes one commenter. Another likens the statue to real-life sexual assailants and harassers: “You claim that Sleepwalker is inert, passive – free of action or blame. Funny, so do his real-life counterparts.” One woman gets a wee bit excited with, “He ‘appears’ like a creepy pervert! There are so many talented artists who create BEAUTY! This is not art! It’s a sexual assault!” Notably, no self-identified rape survivors piped in to say that the statue reminded them of their own experiences, but that didn’t hold back the tide of speculation that it might traumatize them. Read more…
