Brooklyn Hangs Tough - art exhibit censorship

Art in America, Jan, 2000 by Lee Rosenbaum

Following a wide-ranging interview with Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman, the author examines a broad array of money-related issues highlighted by the "Sensation" controversy.

Listening to Arnold Lehman, you'd think that the notorious "Sensation" show had been a great boon for the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the art world in general. "It's so important that people are talking about art," the museum's director declared in a two-hour interview with Art in America. "In the subway stations, in the grocery stores, people are talking about this exhibition," which is attracting "an incredibly young audience" of high school and college students, many of them first-time visitors "who connect with these works."

The show is part of Brooklyn's new agenda of "actively competing for the most engaging and exciting traveling exhibitions being organized throughout the world," according to Lehman's written report to the museum's board. High-profile, outside-organized blockbusters such as "Monet and the Mediterranean," "Jewels of the Romanovs" and last summer's "Impressionists in Winter" have helped the Brooklyn Museum's attendance double since Lehman returned to his native Brooklyn in September 1997, after an 18-year stint as director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. "Sensation," in the first six weeks of a three-month run [to Jan. 9], drew 95,000 visitors as compared to 316,500 for the year ending in June 1999. Thousands of letters, all answered by the museum, have streamed in. Halfway through its run, "Sensation" had already attracted almost 2,800 new museum memberships, about a 28 percent increase.

Interviewed in his office shortly after the U.S. District Court restored New York City funding to the museum, the always ebullient Lehman was as feisty and combative as his famously scrappy antagonist, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Unfazed by the mayor's unappreciative scrutiny of the show's young British artists and of his museum's professional standards, Lehman flatly asserted that "nothing we have done is inappropriate. Nothing is outside the practice and standards of museums across the country. Nothing is unethical. We are proud of what we've done." British advertising magnate Charles Saatchi's controversial holdings, Lehman said, constitute "the most important collection of artists representing this decade of incredible activity in Great Britain. It was clear to us that this was an important show to do."

Lehman declared that the Nov. 1 decision of Judge Nina Gershon, which forcefully defended the museum's First Amendment right to show controversial art without government interference or retaliation, "should give the cultural community a great deal of comfort." But considerable discomfort has doubtless been visited upon other museum directors around the country, due to the harsh spotlight that the "Sensation" controversy has focused on exhibition strategies commonly employed, more discreetly, by many of their own institutions. Perhaps anticipating the firestorm it could create, a number of American museums had passed up "Sensation," despite Brooklyn's best efforts to find other venues to help spread its costs. "We almost had Denver," Lehman wrote in a memo to the museum's board chairman, Robert Rubin, "but the show was too shocking for them." Notwithstanding the affirmation of First Amendment protection, Brooklyn's "Sensation" woes may only serve to reinforce the timidity of many American museums, whose officials may not relish incurring the wrath of politicians, litigators and vocal segments of the public.

Such concerns also influenced the sudden decision of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, to cancel its planned showing of "Sensation," which was to open in June. In a brief written statement issued on Nov. 26, the museum declared that "as a publicly funded institution, the Gallery will not proceed with a show which has been the centre of a furore in New York over issues which have obscured discussion of the artistic merit of the works of art." According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the museum had received "hundreds of letters" opposing the show and may have also been daunted by problems with funding and installation. At this writing, there are still discussions to bring "Sensation" to the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota, Japan, in 2001. Several museums in Europe and Southeast Asia have also expressed interest.

According to the Brooklyn Museum's prominent First Amendment lawyer, Floyd Abrams, the ongoing court battle, with expected appeals, could take at least a year and more than $500,000 in legal fees to resolve, another year and "hundreds of thousands" more in legal fees if the case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court. Projected only last March at $650,000, the final cost for "Sensation," not even taking legal fees into account, is now pegged at almost $2 million, partly because of greatly increased security expenditures for guards and the purchase of two metal detectors. (At this writing, there have been no attempts at vandalism, according to museum officials.) Despite strong attendance and retail sales, the show is not expected to break even, Lehman said. Legal expenses (not included in those calculations) could be partly reimbursed by the city, if the final court decision awards costs, as often happens in successful First Amendment cases.