Gallery owner latest war victim

A SAN FRANCISCO gallery owner bears a painful reminder of her nation’s unresolved anguish over the incidents at the Abu Ghraib prison, a black eye delivered by an unknown assailant who apparently objected to a painting that depicts US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners.

The assault outside the Capobianco gallery in the city’s North Beach district late on Thursday night was the worst in a string of verbal and physical attacks directed at Lori Haigh since the artwork was installed at her gallery on May 16.

San Francisco police have stepped up patrols around the gallery, but Ms Haigh decided to close the gallery indefinitely, citing concern for the safety of her two children, aged 14 and 4, who often accompanied her to work.

Guy Colwell’s painting, titled “Abuse”, depicts three US soldiers leering at a group of naked men in hoods with wires connected to their bodies. The one in the foreground has a blood-spattered American flag patch on his uniform. In the background, a soldier in sunglasses guards a blindfolded woman.

The painting was part of a show of the Berkeley artist’s work that mostly featured pastel-coloured abstracts.

Two days after the painting went up in a front window, someone threw eggs and dumped trash on the doorstep. Ms Haigh said she did not think to connect it to the events at Baghdad's notorious prison until people started leaving threats on her answering machine. She removed the painting but the answering machine recorded new calls from people accusing her of being a coward for moving it.

Last weekend, Ms Haigh said a man walked into the gallery, pretended to scrutinize the painting for a moment, then marched up to her desk and spat in her face. On Thursday, someone knocked on the door of the gallery, then punched Ms Haigh in the face when she stepped outside.

“I never set out to be a crusader or a political activist,” said Haigh, who has received support since closing the gallery. Her favourite was an email which read: “I’m sure that a few dangerous minds don’t understand that they have only mimicked the same perversity this painting had expressed.”