Was Creative Australia unaware of its chosen artist's political views when it enthusiastically endorsed him (bizarre, for any sentient administrator)?
Or did it actively decide to register a vote of faith in its merit-based selection process and let art just be about art, only to fold like a deck of cards at the first whiff of what that would actually look like?
Does the decision to call for an external review of the selection process amount to a concession that it was potentially flawed? Is this a self-protection measure? It certainly casts a shadow over the experts it recruited to review the applications, the individual responsible for the visual arts programme (who has since resigned) and of course the successful artist, his colleague and his planned project.
