How "Sensation" Became a Scandal - censorship of art exhibit

Art in America, Jan, 2000 by Steven C. Dubin

To what extent was the flare-up at the Brooklyn Museum a stage-managed scandal? Below, a look at the roles played by religious pressure groups, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the press.

It has become fashionable to deny that the "culture wars" still exist. Some commentators argue that the term is overly broad, that it provokes overheated rhetoric and that Americans do not feel split by most social issues.

Yet consider this: In October 1998, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the street outside a midtown Manhattan theater where a new play was opening. One large, boisterous group was protesting the staging of Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, which retells the life of Jesus as the story of a contemporary gay man and his friends. The protest was coordinated by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a religious advocacy, civil rights and pressure group, which brought busloads of demonstrators to New York City from several states. Meanwhile, another band of marchers showed their silent support of the playwright and the First Amendment. They had been mobilized by People for the American Way. Cops kept the two groups separated across a large no-man's-land. They directed newcomers with the command, "Jesus Christ to the right, freedom of expression to the left." Rarely has there been such a vivid and tangible embodiment of one of the deepest divisions in contemporary American society.

Fast-forward to fall 1999, to a location across the East River in Brooklyn. Two similarly opposed constituencies clashed again, this time over the exhibition "Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection." Without having seen the show, the Catholic League and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani condemned it as "sick stuff," "blasphemous" and unsuitable for display in a venue like the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which is partially funded by taxpayers' dollars. Here institutional daring collided with religious fervor and political inflexibility. The result? Posturing, threats and a bizarre carnival of media coverage. The public was transfixed by the spectacle, within New York City, from coast to coast and even worldwide.

These recent events were both surprising and mundane. They were startling because you might expect that crusading politicians, zealous religious leaders and self-appointed moral arbiters would have learned some valuable lessons during the cultural struggles of the past decade--such as the basic fact that art works are protected as a form of expression by the Constitution. Moreover, a body of legal decisions has established that although the government has no obligation to fund the arts, once it does so it cannot discriminate against particular viewpoints.

In Brooklyn, the stakes rapidly escalated: Mayor Giuliani threatened that unless the exhibition was abridged or moved to a private venue, he would terminate the city's annual contribution of $7.2 million to the Brooklyn Museum for operating expenses (about one-third of its yearly budget); withhold a promised $20 million for capital improvements; dismiss the museum's trustees; and reclaim the city-owned building that the museum occupies, leaving a priceless collection of art and artifacts homeless. "How can this be happening in the cultural capital of the world?" asked New Yorkers, and many others, in disbelief.

What took place in Brooklyn had the ring of familiarity. In the past decade, museums have become the epicenter of America's culture wars, and Americans have witnessed a string of clashes that can be recited as effortlessly as Civil War buffs reel off the famous battles of an earlier age. These confrontations include the fierce debates over exhibitions that have highlighted slavery, ethnicity, the legacy of Freud, the Old West and the dropping of the atomic bomb by the Enola Gay. Would-be censors have repeatedly mobilized their forces in these instances, playing out a role they have perfected over time.

Protest at the Brooklyn Museum

Imagine the following scene: It's a brilliant, crisp early autumn morning on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Museum of Art, the second largest museum in the country and one of the oldest, is adorned with exhibition banners and enveloped in controversy. Listen to the several hundred demonstrators who have gathered to protest "Sensation" on opening day, Saturday, Oct. 2, 1999, and you'll quickly understand that something peculiar is afoot. Some demonstrators hand out "vomit bags" to the show's visitors, suggesting (along the lines of the museum's own publicity material) that the exhibition will prove stomach-turning. The bags are embossed with the sword and shield of the Catholic League, the organizer of the protest. But the entreaties of the demonstrators are largely ignored by those in the lengthy line of eager visitors that snakes along the museum's front drive, past the subway entrance and down the broad boulevard.

Late the previous afternoon, a larger, more fired-up crowd had rallied in support of the museum. That Friday demonstration was planned by the New York Civil Liberties Union, and those present were treated to passionate speeches by luminaries such as Susan Sarandon, Wendy Wasserstein and Jane Alexander. All were appalled that Mayor Giuliani had tried to force museum officials to remove a painting from the show because he felt that it represented "Catholic-bashing" and "hate speech."