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[NEWS] Nick Cave Wins Legal Battle Over “Truth Be Told” Artwork In Upstate New York
February 9, 2021
Nick Cave’s Truth Be Told. Photo: Nick Cave/Jack Shainman Gallery.
The zoning board of the village of Kinderhook, New York, on Tuesday ruled unanimously that the Nick Cave work Truth Be Told, which consists of the titular phrase rendered in 21-foot high vinyl letters and which spanned the 160-foot-wide brick face of Jack Shainman Gallery outpost the School, is an artwork and not a sign, and therefore cannot be censored. As a result, the village will not attempt to collect from the School the $200-a-day fine threatened by village code enforcer Peter Bujanow for violating the municipality’s signage regulations.
In a statement posted on Instagram, Jack Shainman wrote, “We want to thank our community, whose unwavering support over the past months has gotten us through this surreal saga. And of course, we want to thank Nick and Bob [Faust, Cave’s collaborator] for allowing us to be a part of this vision.”
Nick Cave. Photo: Sandro.
The ruling came after receipt of a petition, signed by more than 3,300 people, demanding that the work be allowed to stay, and just over a week after a three-and-a-half-hour Zoom hearing on the topic attended by 180 people, during which the work was passionately defended by museum directors, villagers, and children. All were responding to village mayor Dale Leiser’s contention, made almost immediately after the work went up at the end of October, that the text piece constituted a sign, not art, and therefore was not permissible in accordance with local statutes. The debate raged all winter, with the work coming down as scheduled at the end of January, just days before the zoning board’s ruling.
Aiding Truth Be Told’s status as an artwork were the plans of several storied institutions to exhibit the work following its removal from the School. Mass MOCA will display the work, which Cave conceived in response to the killing last summer of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, on billboards nearby the North Adams, Massachusetts, museum this month. In May, the work will travel to the Brooklyn Museum, where it will be displayed on the outdoor plaza near its entrance, to coincide with an exhibition of contemporary works from the collection.
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