SECTION 1 - via - School of Visual Arts

This “naming” is educational. Accurate information is crucial to good education. Classrooms
today must have globes that portray the current geopolitical realities of our world. Using “cold
war” era globes to teach geography today would be confusing and inaccurate. Granted, one
would need to use a “cold war” era globe to teach the history of the cold war period. So my
question returns: how are we to describe the moment of the viewer encountering the label-card
next to the Cleveland woodcarving? What sort of educational moment is this?
This question becomes, I believe, a question of authority. Where does authority lie with respect
to the issue of “naming” something? For example, did the artist who sculpted the Statue of
Liberty name it such? Did the author even name the work at all? If the artist didn’t name it,
who did? On what/who’s authority? Who was the “naming authority?”
Historical circumstances will sometimes move authorities to change the names of things. Only
following the presidency of Ronald Reagan was National Airport renamed Reagan International
Airport. Appropriate authority has the power to change the names of streets, buildings, the way
dates are identified: streets and buildings are renamed after important public figures; the status
of calendar dates is changed to reflect altered historical realities such as the addition of M. L.
King, Jr. Day as a national holiday. Names emerge out of the historical situation; re-naming is
historically based.
Why do we re-name things? There is an educational dimension here. Names can teach:
Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Armistice Day. But does this apply to a work of
art? Can a work of art be re-named? If not, why not? If so, under what circumstances?
The biblical tradition provides an interesting example which may illuminate our question. The
text of the book of Exodus reflects a long period of development in its composition. It probably
reaches its final, fixed (i.e., as we have it today) during the fifth century BCE. 19 Exodus speaks
of “plagues” afflicting the Egyptians due to Pharaoh’s refusal to allow the Hebrews to leave
Egypt. 20 Some three-to-four hundred years later, the author of the book of Wisdom (found in
Bibles in the Catholic tradition, though not in Hebrew or most Protestant Bibles) re-reads
Exodus. 21 The author of Wisdom re-names the plagues “signs.” 22 In fact, Wisdom re-interprets
the 10 plagues into a 6+1 formula based on the creation story in Genesis 1.
Commentators on the text of Wisdom speculate that the word “signs” brings a stronger
emphasis on the present into the traditional story of the exodus from Egypt. I believe this
interpretation basically argues that the author of Wisdom re-interpreted Exodus for didactic
reasons: how can our reflection on the past help us to better understand the present? The
plagues are ancient history, but signs are all around us now!
The author of Wisdom did not confine himself to simply restating the traditional word
“plague,” even though that was the word used by the artists who composed the text of Exodus.
There is, within the biblical tradition itself, a sense of an organic, developmental character. Is
this not like our situation with the Cleveland woodcarving? If indeed the common
understanding of the past would have been to name the figures Christ and St. John the
Evangelist, would it not be reasonable to re-name them given the information of current
biblical scholarship?
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