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Art gallery shows good taste: cancels pro-Trump show featuring Milo and Shkreli

Twinks 4 Trump
Part of the #Twinks4Trump series. Photo: Lucian Wentrich, Instagram
Organizers of an art show featuring works in praise of Donald Trump, called #DaddyWillSaveUs, is scrambling to find a new home after their gallery cancelled the event just days before it was set to take place in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Saturday.

The show is to feature the “Twinks For Trump” photographs of Lucian Wintrich, which were on display at an event at the Republican National Convention, as well as contributions from Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos, Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes James O’Keefe and disgraced “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli. O’Keefe is famous for his deceptively edited videos against groups like ACORN and Planned Parenthood. Shkreli became famous for increasing the price of a drug used by some HIV patients from $13.50 to $750 per tablet. He had been a supporter of Bernie Sanders, attempting to give him a campaign donation, which was returned. Trump has called him “zero,” “nothing” and “a spoiled brat.”

Yiannopolous made headlines for his involvement in the bullying of Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones, resulting in a lifetime ban from Twitter.

Wintrich sent Fox News screenshots he obtained of a private Facebook invitation being circulated by a group called “Queer Love Against Trump’s Hate,” calling for people to “stop or interrupt” the event and shame the gallery. He further contends that the owner of the gallery, Pierogi’s “The Boiler,” told him he had received emails from 50 artists saying the show would ruin his reputation and that they would not show their work there again if they went ahead with it.

The gallery Told Fox News they had cancelled the event, for which they were renting space and not hosting, because the organizer failed to provide certification of insurance and that it had nothing to do with outside pressures. They also claim the show was misrepresented.

Gallery co-owner Joe Amrhein told artnet News he thought the show was meant to be satire.

“He can find somewhere else to show it. I’ve been getting too much contradictory information and realized that he’s been lying to me all this time. We gave him the benefit of the doubt, but that was my fault,” Amrhein wrote in a statement. “Down deep I thought a satirical show about Trump was a good idea, and still do, but [Wintrich] really believes in this stuff. It’s all about freedom of speech, according to him and now we’re ‘non believers.'”

“While I am very disappointed by Joe Amrhein’s false statement, I am more disappointed that he caved under pressure from others who call themselves ‘artists,'” Wintrich responded in a statement of his own. “Art is supposed to make people think, it is supposed to showcase a larger perspective, to challenge that status quo. For a gallery owner to cave to others, ‘artists’ who glue pompoms to particle board and sell them at a premium while neither challenging nor changing anything, is truly unfortunate. This sort of progressive crypto-fascism that censors opinion, ideology, and culture, has no place in the art world.”

Wintrich had released a video talking up the space, and the artists to be featured in it, which you can watch below.


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