Ominous NRA Video Uses Iconic American Public Art, And Artists Are Angry

The NRA’s visual logic suggests a new twist in the culture wars. Cities, today, are thriving, and the old rhetoric of the city as a kind of cancer spreading into the heartland no longer works. So the NRA has adopted a new narrative: The city, no matter how successful, is a pernicious collective endeavor that will ultimately decay into violence and oppression. The video in which “Cloud Gate” appears is succinct in this prediction: From its opening images of public sculpture and architecture it moves directly into images of protest and violence and finally an urgent exhortation from the narrator