Question

Anyone who glorifies graffiti needs to answer one question: If your home were tagged during the night without your consent, would you welcome the new addition to your décor or would you immediately call a painter, if not the police?

No institution that has celebrated graffiti in recent years — like the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles or the Museum of the City of New York — would allow its own premises to be defaced for even one minute. Graffiti is something that one celebrates, if one is juvenile enough to do so, when it shows up on someone else’s property but never on one’s own.

The question “When does graffiti become art?” is meaningless. Graffiti is always vandalism. By definition it is committed without permission on another person's property, in an adolescent display of entitlement. Whether particular viewers find any given piece of graffiti artistically compelling is irrelevant. Graffiti’s most salient characteristic is that it is a crime.

John Lindsay, the progressive New York politician who served as mayor from 1966 to 1973, declared war on graffiti in 1972. He understood that graffiti signaled that informal social controls and law enforcement had broken down in New York’s public spaces, making them vulnerable to even greater levels of disorder and law-breaking. A 2008 study from the Netherlands has shown that physical disorder and vandalism have a contagious effect, confirming the “broken windows theory.”

There is nothing “progressive” about allowing public amenities to be defaced by graffiti; anyone who can avoid a graffiti-bombed park or commercial thoroughfare will do so, since tagging shows that an area is dominated by vandals who may be involved in other crimes as well.

New York’s conquest of subway graffiti in the late 1980s was the first sign in decades that the city was still governable; that triumph over lawlessness paved the way for the urban renaissance that followed.

"Graffiti Is Always Vandalism" by Heather MacDonald. From The New York Times. © 2014 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. Used under license.

Unless otherwise noted, this content is licensed under theCC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

Notes
Glorify (verb) : to praise or honor
the style, furnishings, or decorative scheme of a room, building, or the like
Contemporary (adjective) : current, modern
a piece of land and the buildings on it
unimportant
noticeable or important
someone who believes in social change and new ideas
open to danger; having weakness
a theory that argues visible signs of disorder, such as vandalism or neglect, can lead to an increase in crime and antisocial behavior in a community
something that makes a place or an occasion more convenient, pleasing, or gracious
renewal or revival
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Assessment Questions
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How does paragraph 2 contribute to the development of ideas in the text?


A. It shows that the author agrees museums should celebrate graffiti.
B. It shows that the author's views on graffiti have changed over time.
C. It shows that the author questions current attitudes toward graffiti.
D. It shows that the author feels curious about different forms of graffiti.

Answer 1

C. It shows that the author questions current attitudes toward graffiti.

Explanation: The paragraph points out the hypocrisy of institutions that "celebrate" graffiti while not tolerating it on their own property, which expresses the author's skepticism about contemporary praise of graffiti.