“You know, I found a society that was evolving much more quickly than I had anticipated,” he shared. In an interview with the Pittsburgh-based LGBTQ+ publication QBurgh, Moore said he has always been an out gay man, and that when he visited Saudia Arabia, he was “pretty astonished” by what he found. The show at AlUla is organized by Patrick Moore, the Warhol director, who isn’t a curator. But of course, Warhol himself, it is true, collaborated extensively with the authoritarian regime of the Shah of Iran. To show Warhol under the sponsorship of the Saudi fundamentalist regime is almost like organizing a club called “Jewish friends of the Third Reich.” After all, as you can readily learn online, what used to be called “homosexuality” is not just officially frowned upon in Saudia Arabia - it is potentially subject to capital punishment. Who knows what some young visitors might learn from this exhibition? If we only engaged in cultural exchanges with societies whose political culture we approved, then how many such exchanges would be possible? And, more to the point, at this moment, who are we Americans to think of ourselves as moral models for the rest of the world? But on the other hand, Fame may well validate an authoritarian regime whose official policies and practices, especially those concerning sexual freedoms, are abhorrent. On one hand, the presentation of a body of Warhol’s art to a Saudi audience is a way to potentially open up a dialogue. When then I reflected, the moral dilemmas posed by this exhibition were self-evident. (In 2019, I reviewed the museum’s exhibition of his Catholic works, which I doubt will make it to this exhibition.) I presume that the selection of Warhols will require cautious, careful editing. But the very idea of choosing Warhol, of all possible Western modernists, was to me a most unexpected choice. And I can imagine a loan exhibition, say, of still-life French paintings. And, of course, it makes money for the loaner. A show of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Islamic carpets in Saudi Arabia would make more sense. It’s a good way to build the audience for institutions on both sides of the loan. Museums renting out part of the collection to other venues - that’s a familiar practice. So why did I end up turning down this opportunity? Since I have never visited Saudia Arabia, and am most curious about that country, the trip could have been a good way to inform myself. The all-expenses-paid trip I was offered - Business Class flight, hotel accommodation, lavish dinners, and programming that includes a helicopter tour over the desert and a “tour with vintage cars” - seemed tempting. Hosted by the government-funded AlUla Arts Festival, the show will include dozens of works on loan from Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, a branch of the Carnegie Museum. Not long ago, I received an invitation for a press trip to Saudi Arabia to attend a preview of the exhibition Fame: Andy Warhol in AlUla, opening on February 17. Saudi Arabia Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman, à la Warhol (image Valentina Di Liscia/Hyperallergic)
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