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Averting our Eyes

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Oil tanks near Portland, Maine

In Maine tourists learn to avert their eyes from the less ingratiating sights, those incompatible with the invented past and our modern expectations thereof. Lippard 1999, 163

But why do they do so? Is it desire not to be offended, or also not to offend? Is there a feeling that they don't belong in the story, or a feeling that they want a different more idealized story?

How do we get the tourists to feel and see complexities?

Who is the "we" in the previous sentence?