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

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

Donohue and Giuliani: each had motive, and each had opportunity. Did anyone else stand to gain from this controversy?. Emphatically, yes: it was a triumvirate of individuals that shaped this dispute.

Typically in museum controversies, the media simplify, amplify and sustain the battle. Only rarely can the media be cited for launching these events. "Sensation" became a major story on Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999, when all three major New York City newspapers-the Times, the Post and the Daily News--featured reports on the mayor's press conference of the day before. There Giuliani had for the first time publicly condemned the Brooklyn Museum exhibition, which was scheduled to open the following week, and singled out Ofili's painting. Television and radio picked up the story, too.

Yet the tale actually began a week earlier. On Thursday, Sept. 16, the Daily News emblazoned an article with the inflammatory headline "Bklyn Gallery of Horror / Gruesome Show Stirs Controversy." But who, exactly, had been stirred up at this point? Donohue for one, who was quoted as saying, "This has gone beyond the vulgar, the blasphemous, and the scatological." Yet Donohue later told me that he had heard nothing about the show before a Daily News reporter called him, described the works included in "Sensation" and asked him to respond. This was two days before the article appeared. In other words, there was no existing controversy around this show;, the reporter appears to have created it by strategically planting information he could be sure would germinate rapidly. Donohue acknowledges that he promptly sent a staffer to buy a copy of the catalogue and subsequently issued a press release setting forth his group's position on the same day the Daily News published the story. Donohue also sent a letter of complaint to every member of the city council, but claims to have had no direct contact with the mayor regarding "Sensation" at that time or since.

The Daily News story of Sept. 16 also included a comment from the mayor's press secretary. She stated, "Assuming the description of the exhibit is accurate, no money should be spent on it" (emphasis added). Since the show was not yet the subject of public discussion, she, too, seems to have been prompted by the Daily News reporter and then responded to his questions. The most probable explanation is that a reporter sensed a good story in the making and set out to help it along. At that point, cadres of religious folks had not yet been mobilized against "Sensation." The head of the Catholic League hadn't heard of it. Nor, apparently, had the mayor expressed misgivings about the show. But it was a good bet that this story would make a choice report, a certified scoop.(4)

As Donohue observes, "A fair amount of what we do involves the subject of religion and sex. For people in the media, that's great copy. And, of course, in this case here you have the artistic, you have the religious, you have the political, you have the constitutional. There was so much meat there for someone to paw on." But it apparently took a Daily News reporter to set events into motion. This seems to have been relatively simple, for all those involved were linked in a symbiotic relationship; each had something to offer that the others wanted.