Museums in the Age of Giuliani - New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's attempts to censor "Sensation" exhibit at Brooklyn Museum of Art

Art in America, Dec, 1999 by Marshall Berman

Mayor Giuliani's assault is no surprise. In a short time he has come a long way, from being a Republican who supported Democratic governor Mario Cuomo because he thought Cuomo cared about New York City, to acting the part of a wanna-be senator who is courting the GOP's far fight by running against the city. It was more surprising to see how nimble a great many prominent figures turned out to be when they ducked and ran the instant the trouble began, just like the solid citizens in An Enemy of the People and High Noon. New York's Cultural Institutions Group got out a fairly decent letter of protest, signed by a majority of its members (though not by all). Signatories included the city's two biggest and richest museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the non-CIG-member MOM& But then Philippe de Montebello, director of the Met, wrote an unusually craven op-ed piece in the New York Times that apologized for doing the right thing: "On merits, the Mayor is right," he said; his museum would never show such trash. Never mind all the Met's Byzantine and Sienese and Renaissance Madonnas, many of which suggest theologies at least as problematic as Ofili's; never mind the Met's long embrace of the painter Balthus, whose vision of child sexuality is the clear source of some of the Brooklyn show's most troubling work (e.g., the Chapman brothers' Garden of Eden); never mind the Met's ongoing love affair with Lucian Freud, whose representations of nudes created the ground on which Jenny Saville and many other young painters move and live. De Montebello seems to think the Met's art is all "good," and its essence of goodness makes it totally different from other art (like Brooklyn's) that draws on similar sources. Alas, he doesn't supply the formula for this essence. Maybe he thinks that as long as the formula stays secret, we will need museum directors. He may also think that if he bends the knee to Baal today, his own institution won't be targeted for sacrifice tomorrow.

Catholics and Catholicism play a big role in this affair: a Catholic mayor is harassing a Catholic artist, apparently under pressure from the Catholic League; Peggy Steinfels, editor of the Catholic left magazine Commonweal, reproves the show's supporters for "Catholic-bashing." Eighty years ago, Catholic censors condemned James Joyce as a heretic and drove him out of Ireland. But the 20th century's ups and downs have taught many Catholics to read between the lines, and to see how secular humanism can both conceal and reveal intense spirituality. As a result, English departments in our Catholic colleges now routinely recognize Joyce as the greatest Catholic writer of the century. If today's straw polls mean anything, Catholics may have developed a feeling for complexity in the visual arts as well. By large margins (about the same as for non-Catholics), they want the mayor to stop harassing the museum, they don't think people should condemn art without seeing it, and they are getting on the subway to check out the show.