Lion's Share (22 page)

On the way home, Jana insisted they stop at the discount drug store on Broadway and pick up some wrapping paper. Yet when they got to the apartment, instead of opening the new paper, she went into the kitchen and came back with a roll of Reynolds Wrap. Ed turned on the television and watched silently while Jana sat cross-legged on the floor, folding the corners of the foil carefully around the box holding the ceramic clown. He wanted to stop her, to remind her that his niece was important to him, that as long as she'd bought the wrapping paper she ought to use it. But something in Jana's movements, the energy with which she set to wrapping, warned him not to speak.

Aware of his eyes on her, she selected a sheet of wrapping paper, spread it on the floor, and set the foil-covered box in the center of it. She double-folded a piece of tape and stuck the center of the box securely to the paper, then folded the paper around the rest loosely. She pinned a bow in the center of the top, then asked to borrow his penknife.

She pulled out a small blade and began making quick, narrow slits in the wrapping paper, along all four sides. She unpinned the top bow, fluffed out the sides, and pinned the bow again, then sprayed the whole thing with hairspray until the paper became stiff. Finally she held it up for his examination.

Ed stared in wonderment. It looked like a Chinese lantern. The sides ballooned out, and the silver paper glittered between the slits. “It's fabulous!” he said.

“You'll have to be careful shipping it. These sides will crush easily.”

“More than worth the effort. That wrapping looks like a present in itself.”

“It's based on the same concept as those string decorations we used to make in arts and crafts. The ones where you blew up a balloon, pasted different colored wool around it, then popped the balloon.”

“I remember those. They never looked that great, though. Leave it to an artist to be creative,” he teased.

“Resourceful, not creative,” Jana said. “It comes from wanting to give presents and being broke. The first few years I was living in the city, I didn't have a steady job and couldn't even get a charge card. I remember one year I took a lot of my old sketches and watercolors, practice pieces. I cut them up and sewed them into handmade books, then gave them to friends as Christmas presents.”

“I wish I'd known you then,” Ed mused. “I'll bet they were something else.”

“Be nice, and maybe I'll make you one this year.” Jana smiled up at him, then devoted all her attention to his sister's jewelbox, trying to decide how it might be wrapped.

Ed could have spent the rest of the evening entranced by her movements. Was this the same woman who, two hours ago, had gotten hysterical over the mere mention of children? Jana's ability to bounce back from her little episodes was as much a marvel as her creatively wrapped presents were. He might envy his friends in relationships with calm, secure women, but that very stability would more than likely put him off. His mother's outbursts had set a pattern he all but expected in women. And hysterical or not, Jana's self-assurance was clear to him; the more she fought against admitting it the clearer it became. He could be supportive and responsive to her moods, but he didn't have to carry the world's weight on his shoulders.

THE MEETING had been called for two o'clock, but people began drifting in fifteen minutes early. Pretending to busy herself with last-minute arrangements, Jana watched out of a corner of her eye while Natalie chatted away. They'd attempted, in choosing their board, to achieve a balance of arts supporters and business expertise, but this would be the first time their values were put to a test.

Jana and Natalie had been over this a hundred times in the past two weeks. Jana took a steadfast position: we invited an artist whose work we respect; he submitted pieces which are entirely appropriate to the theme of the exhibition. Yes,
Power and Light
raises issues the exhibition's sponsor would prefer to avoid; it's also an extremely strong work. We cannot, under any circumstances, ask Matt Fillmore to substitute another piece. And Natalie's position was: that's not your decision or mine. The board will decide. She might hope they'd agree with Jana, but she wasn't about to tell them what to do.

Much as she hated to admit it, Jana knew Natalie was right: they couldn't act without their board. More importantly, they needed the board's corporate jockeying for position if they were going to have a leg to stand on with APL.

And where did she stand with Ed? All of the sudden there was more than her job, more than one exhibition, more than art-world prestige at stake. If they could get the board behind them, then even if worst came to worst and APL refused to permit that work in the show, they could conceivably come up with last-minute backing. The exhibition might not be on as grand a scale, but that would only make it closer to their original proposal. Even if APL retained sponsorship, Jana was beginning to wonder if her relationship with Ed could stand the strain. If there
was
strain; for all she knew, APL's board might readily agree to show the work. Don't count your chickens before they hatch, she reminded herself, glancing up as the final two board members walked in. But also: don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Natalie passed out prints of all six slides Matt Fillmore had sent them, checked to make sure everyone had received copies of the articles Jana gathered, then turned the meeting over to their board president.

“I think it's fairly obvious from reading these articles, and the passages Jana has highlighted, what position our curator takes,” Bill began. “And I'll be the first to concede that the articles are extremely articulate at addressing the dangers involved in corporate censorship. But what's the other side of the coin?”

“The Paperworks Space loses its credibility,” Jana said. “We could get all the sponsorship in the world, but if we can't convince the artists we respect to show with us, what good does it do?”

“I was thinking more of our sponsor's predicament,” Bill said with a good-natured chuckle.

“APL has gotten off easy so far with this new generating plant,” another board member began. “There was a bit of negative publicity when they were first granted the land, but even at the time the incident was overshadowed by the government's takeover of reservation land in the Allegheny Mountains so they could build the Kinzua Dam. If APL leaves the work in the show, some people will notice, but it will also go over the heads of many viewers. If they attempt to censor the work, they're risking an onset of negative publicity once again—not only for censorship, but for the generating plant itself.”

“In other words, our job would be to convince them they don't want that publicity?” someone asked.

“And to convince them The Paperworks Space has the power to start such publicity in motion,” Natalie added somewhat doubtfully.

“Don't forget, we're not dealing with a show at the gallery here, but with a city-wide exhibition,” Gary pointed out. “We might be in a much stronger position than you realize.”

“There's another aspect to all this,” Jana said. She pulled a few pages out of her folder and passed copies around. “This is an excerpt from our original proposal to APL. Most of you have seen it before. It's the section discussing the work of artists we're intending to include in the exhibition. I recall writing those descriptions, and how careful I was to allay APL's fears that the works might be controversial.” She recalled that day when Ed had driven her down to the gallery, how she'd watched him looking closely at Lou Daniels' drawings, and silently imagined him putting any fears of controversy to rest once and for all. “To get to the point,” she continued, pushing such thoughts aside, “it wasn't until APL insisted upon more prestigious artists that we came up with Matt Fillmore.”

“Whew,” someone exclaimed. “You're really trying to pass the buck, aren't you?” Another board member pointed out that there were any number of prestigious artists around, and it had still been a decision of The Paperworks Space to include Matt Fillmore.

Bill sat quietly, taking it all in. “Your point is well made, Jana,” he said after a ten-minute discussion. “I'd say that, if worst came to worst, we might remind APL of their insistence on name artists, but the purpose would be to emphasize Matt Fillmore's prestige. Frankly, I'd prefer to find other ways of convincing them to leave the work in the exhibition.”

“Assuming that ‘leaving the work in the exhibition' is our ultimate objective,” another board member said. “It seems to me that hasn't been decided yet. Among other things, this piece doesn't accurately depict Indian life. I did a little research also, and discovered that no Indians in New York State, or anywhere in the Northeast, ever lived in teepees. It was far too cold. So, if we wanted to ask that the work be withdrawn, we would have an aesthetic basis as well.”

“We're talking about art, not history,” Jana said, fighting to keep her voice level.

“I don't think there's any question that the teepee image immediately identifies Native American life to the general public,” Natalie cut in before Jana said something they'd all regret.

“Okay,” Bill said. “I think the first order of business is to make up our minds: do we stick to our guns about including this drawing or is the matter up for discussion and possible compromise?”

Jana noticeably tensed as board members began discussing the pros and cons. Gary, Larry Rivers, and luckily, Bill Fitch all strongly supported her position that the work had to stay. She found herself wondering what position Ed would take. At least no one was suggesting she get him involved. She had feared the worst, had pictured Natalie rattling off all the little extras Ed had done for them last spring when he'd first been interested in her. And when she refused to speak to him, Natalie would comment that she didn't care enough about what happened at The Paperworks Space, the relationship was the only thing that seemed to matter. The whole board would end up attacking her for not caring enough about her job.

“Oh Christ,” Jana told herself. “Here I go on another one of my guilt trips.” She was feeling guilty that she had the show at Walker to prepare for, that she couldn't devote her full attention to the crisis at hand. But instead of getting upset with her perfectionist goals, she was finding fault with Natalie, with the board, with the relationship. “It's a wonder Ed puts up with me,” she mused. “I can barely tolerate myself at a time like this.”

At “a time like this” her attention should be focused on the discussion. She might not want to hear what they were saying, but she had no choice. Two board members, in particular, seemed adamant that the name of the game was compromise, but the arguments Bill and Larry Rivers presented finally won out, and everyone on the board was brought around to a decision that the drawing had to remain at all costs.

“Next order of business: how do we proceed from here?” Bill asked.

“You're the board president,” Natalie said. “I would hope that APL would be attentive to your opinions concerning the work.”

“Didn't you say you were instrumental in Matt Fillmore's Dallas commission?” Jana asked, already knowing the answer. “It would seem that you could approach Frank Markowitz as one CEO to another, as someone who took similar risks with your own company.”

“Certainly I can attempt that, but the controversial aspects of Matt's work never came to the forefront of that Nationbank commission.”

“Pure luck,” someone mumbled, to which Bill responded that he'd been just thinking the same thing. The group broke out in much-needed laughter. After they calmed down, Bill began making a list of the aspects he wanted to stress to APL: the need to avoid negative publicity about that generating plant was first on the list, but what else?

“Free speech in general,” someone suggested.

“The fact that the message will go over the heads of many viewers.”

“Don't forget, there are six exhibition sites; this drawing will be at Lincoln Center. A lot of viewers will only see one or two of the sites and will perceive APL's original message—‘look at the efforts we're making on behalf of your city'—without any knowledge that one artist saw fit to argue with their ‘good intentions.' Unless, of course, the higher-ups at APL want to draw people's attention to the controversy.”

“The drawing will still be in the catalog. Weren't we relying upon that catalog to provide wider coverage than the six sites?”

“If need be, I could probably ensure that the catalog is not distributed as widely as we'd planned,” Natalie began.

“We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Bill said. “Far be it from me to put any ideas into APL's head.”

“As I said in my letter that accompanied the articles about similar incidents, I think it's wise to point out we're not trying to pull a fast one,” Jana said. “APL will have copies of this drawing in their hands in plenty of time to seek the advice of their own board and make a calm decision. We could have held out longer if we'd wanted to. But the fact that we're confronting them with the problem almost as soon as it comes to our attention should speak well for the gallery's professionalism and social responsibility.”