Asheville Art Museum’s exhibition includes controversial ‘Klan Tableau’ by Christenberry

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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The Asheville Art Museum has an exhibition of work by artist William Christenberry up right now that includes a controversial collection of Ku Klux Klan-inspired pieces. The Mountain Xpress has the story about the exhibition, which will close on Sunday, the day after Asheville holds its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Prayer Breakfast.

Christenberry is known as much for his photographs of the rural South as for his Klan room, which is filled with dolls of Klansmen and other assorted pieces. 

Here’s Mountain Xpress arts and entertainment editor Rebecca Sulock:

Visitors enter the room through heavy black curtains, walking past a warning that the art may provoke strong reactions. For this Southerner, this room filled with dozens of Klan dolls, eerie images and other memorabilia, punched revulsion into my gut.

Though some critics felt more blasé after encountering the Tableau: “I just can’t get riled up by men playing dress-up. I take it all in, and I am struck, not by the banality of evil, but by the silliness of it,” Washington Post staff writer Teresa Wiltz wrote last year when the exhibit was at American University.

I haven’t seen the exhibition yet, so I’ll reserve my judgement until I check it out. Have you seen it? What do you think?