Last week, a San Francisco art exhibition that included animal cruelty was in the news. This Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, March 30, included a lead article (by Ilana DeBare, pg B1) headed, "Art Institute halts exhibition showing killing of animals; Workers threatened; video unclear about why deaths filmed."

The article opens:
"Citing threats of violence by animal rights activists, the San Francisco Art Institute said Saturday that it is canceling a controversial exhibition that included video clips of animals being bludgeoned to death, as well as a public forum it had scheduled to address the controversy.

""We've gotten dozens of threatening phone calls that targeted specific staff people with death threats, threats of violence and threats of sexual assaults,' said Art Institute President Chris Bratton. 'We remain committed to freedom of speech as fundamental to this institution, but we have to take people's safety very seriously.'

"The exhibit that sparked the controversy was a one-person show by Paris artist Adel Abdessemed called 'Don't Trust Me,' which opened March 19.

"Along with a variety of other elements, the show included a series of video loops of animals being bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer in front of a brick wall. The animals killed included a pig, goat, deer, ox, horse and sheep."

While the headline and opening lines of the article suggest that the exhibition was removed only because of threats of violence, further on we read:

"Abdessemed's show, one of about a dozen public exhibitions that the 650-student school hosts each year, had opened fairly quietly. But as word spread among animal rights groups, more than 8,000 people sent e-mails to the institute slamming the show. Institute officials temporarily closed the show Wednesday and scheduled a public forum for Monday.

"But then the tone of some of the e-mails turned violent, Bratton said, with threats against individual staff members, such as, 'We're going to gather up your children and bludgeon their heads.' Officials decided to shutter the exhibition permanently, the first time in the institute's 137-year history that a show was closed for safety reasons. They also canceled the forum.

""Some of the people who said the most threatening things said they would be present at the forum,' Bratton said."

Because I am choosing to send this article out to animal advocates, headlined and opening as it is, and thereby at first seeming to suggest that the threats of violence were successful, I feel I should comment further. I am disappointed that after the efforts of 8,000 people, leading to a temporary closure and a forum, threats made by a few shut down all discussion. Yes, the immediate effect, the closing of the exhibition, was the same. But in my chapter on activism in "Thanking the Monkey" I cite studies (done on humans!) which show that people forced into a choice will choose otherwise at the first safe opportunity, while those believing they made the choice of their own free will tend to stand by that choice. That is something we intuitively understand: we have all seen it in the sexist sitcoms where the wife whispers to her friend "I got him to agree by making him think it was his idea." And now well documented, it is an important phenomenon for us to keep in mind as we
work to not only win a few battles, but to make monumental shifts in the way society treats other species.