Censorship or common decency? Newark Library covers up controversial artwork

Editor's note: The artwork, which can be seen lower in this story, may be offensive to some readers.

The talk at the Newark Library these days has nothing to do with an anticipated book collection, the next visit by schoolchildren or a lecture on Brick City history.

Its all about a huge drawing hanging in the second-floor reference room, raising so much ruckus that the head librarian has had to cover it up so no one can see what it shows.

Its covered with cloth and thats the way many employees want to keep it.

Kara Walker, a renowned African-American artist who examines race, gender, sexuality and violence, created the drawing. It depicts the horrors of reconstruction, 20th-century Jim Crowism and the hooded figures of the Ku Klux Klan.

But thats not what has people upset.

One part of the drawing shows a white man holding the head of a naked black woman to his groin.

"I didnt notice it at first," said Kendell Willis, a library services employee. "Then I looked up and was blown away."

Willis sent Library Director Wilma Grey an e-mail, and so has Sandra West, a library associate who called Walkers work disgusting. She said several employees came to her expressing shock that the library would display such graphic artwork.

"It can go back where it came from," West said. "I really dont like to see my people like this. We need to see something uplifting and not demeaning."

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Censorship or common decency? Newark Library covers up controversial artwork