Artist claims censorship as cartoons are removed from Sharon Town Hall

SHARON — Lakeville Journal Co. editorial cartoonist Dianne Engleke, a resident of Millerton, is accusing employees and elected officials at Town Hall in Sharon of censorship. The walls of the town offices have been used, in recent years, as an art gallery. The exhibits are curated by Tax Collector Donna Christensen. The featured pieces are usually paintings or photographs, often but not always by Sharon residents; their work is shown by invitation. They usually remain up for about a month. Engleke has a friend who works at the town hall who is familiar with her political cartoons, which have appeared in The Lakeville Journal Co.’s Millerton News for several years. The friend spoke to Christensen, who invited Engleke to come in and meet with her.“Donna saw the works and approved them, on two occasions,” Engleke said. Although she also does artwork that does not make social commentary, Engleke said she showed Christensen works that were political in nature. The cartoons had been shown once already, at the NorthEast-Millerton Library, which is a much larger venue. The show was called Opinion Ink; the Sharon show was to be titled Opinion Ink 2.“That show had more than 200 pieces,” Engleke said. “All the works that were taken down in Sharon were shown in Millerton, and no one burned the library down.”For Sharon, she chose about 40 pieces from her 273 published cartoons.“I chose works that were strong, based on the drawings, but that I thought were also funny,” she said. “I did not choose ones that I thought would cause trouble. I thought it was a balanced show.”Apparently someone at Sharon Town Hall didn’t agree. Last Tuesday, Nov. 29, in preparation for the Dec. 1 opening of the show, Engleke and her husband, Mark Liebergall, a co-founder of the 14th Colony Artists group, hung half of the cartoons on the walls of the gallery.“A lot of people were there while we were hanging them and they saw the first 24 pieces and did not seem to have a problem with them,” Engleke said. But, she said, “I went back the next day and the wall that should have had nine cartoons had one left. My first thought was that they fell. Then I realized that wasn’t possible. I went around the corner and saw more spaces.“Then a man came out. He didn’t introduce himself but he said the committee thought the ones taken down were inappropriate,” Engleke continued. “He did not tell me what the committee was. “He pointed to the remaining pieces and asked if I wanted to show them. I said, ‘No, thank you, this is censorship,’ and took the rest down.”Engleke later identified the man as town volunteer William Braislin, who is chairman of the four-member Town Hall Building Committee. When asked about the decision for this newspaper article, Braislin said, “I would love to discuss this with you but I think this thing has exploded and I just don’t want to comment.”He said the decision to take the cartoons down was made by “one of the members in charge of the art department, not me.” But, he added, “I’d rather not say who it is.”Sharon First Selectman Bob Loucks said it was a group decision to pull Engleke’s cartoons from the exhibit.“A number of people walked through and found some of them offensive, and then people who look after the building walked though and thought it was not appropriate to be hung, and they requested some be taken down,” Loucks said.Engleke’s cartoons express the artist’s opinions on a wide array of subjects. Many of them are political and are critical of politicians and elected officials, particularly those in Washington, D.C.“We had only hung cartoons that had been published through 2009,” Engleke said. Although one was critical of the Obama administration and one was critical of Bill and Hillary Clinton, many were critical of the Bush administration because, she said, “that’s who was in office until 2009. From 2010 and 2011 I did cartoons critical of the Democratic administration, but those had not yet been hung.”Among the drawings that were removed, “one was about China and Tibet and the Olympics. There was one about the Blackwater contractors making more money than regular soldiers; it was pro-Army. And there was one critical of the Bush administration about a decision affecting medical insurance for children.”The cartoons critical of Obama and the Clintons, she noted, were not removed from the walls. Loucks, a Republican who ran unopposed this November to win his second term in office, stressed that the works were not taken down at his request.“I didn’t do it,” he said. “There was no one person, and I’m not really going to say a lot about it, especially if there’s going to be some kind of legal thing turned over to an attorney.”“There isn’t going to be any legal action,”Engleke said in an interview Monday, Dec. 5. “But we are going to attend the next selectmen’s meeting in Sharon. Many members of the 14th Colony Artists group live in Sharon and many Sharon residents are artists. We’ve spoken to many of them and feel they really need to carry the ball here.“This is their town and this is their building and they should be active participants in whatever rules are drawn up for displays in their public space.“I have trouble with people from the outside being in the forefront. I think people in the community that’s being affected need to take ownership of the issue.”The next meeting of the Sharon Board of Selectmen is Tuesday, Dec. 13, 5:30 p.m., in the upstairs meeting room.Engleke said she feels ready to move on but “I do want a written apology from the people at Town Hall acknowledging that they took down those 10 works.“I would still like to have the entire show up in Sharon sometime — but not just the censored works. If they choose which ones go up, it allows them to define me by those works. It’s the whole show or nothing. And no, I wouldn’t go back to the town hall for the show.”Meanwhile, she said, “I have other projects I’m working on.” Whitney Joseph contributed to this article.