MEXICO CITY — Hermann Nitsch is hardly a stranger to controversy. This Austrian artist, whose notorious “actions” involve animal viscera and “crucified” participants bathed in blood, was arrested three times as a young man and expelled from Italy for disemboweling a sheep during a performance. But in all these years, Mr. Nitsch, 76, said in an interview, he has “never” had an institution cancel an exhibition of his work.
Until now. Anticipating that Mr. Nitsch’s disturbing oeuvre might upset Mexicans already alarmed by the bloodshed ravaging their country, the Museo Jumex (pronounced WHO-mex), which opened here in November 2013 with great fanfare, abruptly canceled an exhibition that was scheduled to open this week. The pre-emptive decision by the Jumex Foundation, which runs the museum, has been denounced by collectors, curators and art critics as an embarrassing act of censorship by a group striving to establish itself in the international art circuit.
“This is a different kind of shocking,” Mr. Nitsch said in an interview, referring to the decision three weeks ago to call off the show even as the works were en route by boat from Austria to Mexico. The show would have included works like “The Last Supper” (1983), a silk-screen depiction of Christ and the disciples as anatomical figures; canvases splattered with blood and black paint; and videos of past performances. Mr. Nitsch, who said he seeks to create an “intense” sensory experience but not provocation, had not planned live performances at the museum.
“They wasted a lot of money. They wasted my time,” said Mr. Nitsch, who was visiting Mexico despite the change of plans. Peering from beneath the brim of his trademark black hat, he added, “I was very, very sad.”
In a statement responding to questions about the Nitsch show, Patrick Charpenel, the foundation’s director, said the foundation was concerned about the “political and social times Mexico is going through.” The country has been shaken by the September abduction of 43 rural college students, who were detained by the police in Iguala, a town in the State of Guerrero, and handed over to members of a local drug gang, who killed and apparently incinerated them.
But those opposed to the cancellation say it has damaged the credibility of the museum, which is a showcase for the private collection of Eugenio López Alonso, the sole heir to the Grupo Jumex juice fortune. Patricia Martín, who, as the Jumex collection’s first director and curator, helped build it from its inception in 1997 until 2005, said that, given the violence that claims tens of thousands of lives in Mexico each year, the idea that Mexicans were unprepared for Mr. Nitsch’s work was “ridiculous.”
What kept Mexicans like her awake, she said, were televised images of the students’ incinerated bones and the suspects’ description of dumping bodies “as if they were carrying potatoes.’ ”
She said, “Hermann is completely innocent in comparison.”
The Nitsch exhibition would have helped Mexicans confront their bloody reality, she said, adding, “It could open a discussion that would be very fruitful.”
Mr. López has earned respect for incubating contemporary Mexican artists, both through his private collection — with some 2,800 pieces, believed to be Latin America’s largest — and through the Jumex Foundation’s system of grants, sponsorship and community workshops.
But some experts said that Mr. López had not assumed the responsibility that came with opening a museum in the Mexican capital. The foundation, which does not have a board, is financed by Grupo Jumex. While the foundation would not give details about who canceled the exhibition, decisions are sometimes influenced by Eugenio López Rodea, the Grupo Jumex founder and father of the collector, according to people who know the younger Mr. López. The elder Mr. López is considered a man with more conservative tastes than his son.
Cuauhtémoc Medina, a Mexican curator and art critic, said he could not recall an occasion in recent decades when a Mexican museum canceled a show because of fear of controversy, adding, “There’s a lack of seriousness in an institution that — just because it has private funding — forgets that it has a responsibility to the public.”
The Jumex, of course, is not the first museum drawing fire for a controversial show. In 1999, Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the mayor of New York, threatened to cut city financing to the Brooklyn Museum if it did not shut down an exhibition that included Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary,” which incorporated the use of elephant dung. (A federal judge found the mayor’s action violated the First Amendment.)
The storm over the Brooklyn show echoed cases from the 1980s, including the decision by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington to cancel a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective, fearing it would lose public financing. The Smithsonian Institution in 2010 removed a video installation by David Wojnarowicz from a National Portrait Gallery exhibition. It had drawn conservative and religious protests over taxpayer financing of art that the work’s opponents considered sacrilegious.
Mr. Cuauhtémoc cited cases of censorship in Mexico, like that of Robert Chiarito, an American painter, some of whose works were temporarily removed from a Mexico City exhibition in 2000 after a group of local women protested that they were pornographic. In 1988, under pressure from Roman Catholic groups, Mexico City’s Museum of Modern Art shuttered an exhibition by the painter Rolando de la Rosa that included a collage that put the face of Marilyn Monroe on the body of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
In his statement, Mr. Charpenel denied that the decision to cancel Mr. Nitsch’s exhibition was mainly the result of pressure from a petition initiated on change.org by Carlos Silva Ronzón, an animal-rights activist, which gathered some 5,000 signatures.
“People are very sensitive towards any expression of violence,” Mr. Charpenel wrote. “Even though we appreciate and value Nitsch’s art, we were worried about the moment the country is going through right now.”
Still, such concerns should not sway a cultural institution, curators and gallerists said.
“It’s very serious,” said Rina Carvajal, the former chief curator of Miami Art Central, a museum founded by the collector Ella Fontanals-Cisneros.
“They invited a very important artist,” Ms. Carvajal added. “They prepared the exhibition. They announced the exhibition — and then they canceled. It’s not professional.”
Mr. Charpenel, the director, has resigned from his post and plans to leave in March, according to a curator and a collector who talked to him in the past few weeks, but spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve their relationships with the foundation. In an emailed statement, Mr. Charpenel said on Tuesday that he was “still working as director of the Jumex Foundation.”
Speaking by telephone from Miami, Ms. Carvajal said that the Jumex Foundation needed “the respect of the community, of the artists.”
She added, “Who wants to work with a museum that cancels at the last minute?”
Mr. Nitsch, who also writes cacophonous musical scores, said that Mexicans would still get a chance to sample his work at a performance of his new “Symphony for Mexico,” which will be played at the Ex Teresa Museum on Friday.
“Maybe they’ll understand me,” he said.
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