Letter From the Editor - brouhaha over "Sensation," the two-year-old British art exhibition - Brief Article

What is it that makes some people think they should be in charge of what the rest of us are allowed to look at, hear, and read? It certainly isn't that these self-appointed cultural watchdogs know more than the rest of us. Take the recent brouhaha over "Sensation," the two-year-old British art exhibition, which had been traveling and which arrived in New York for what probably would have been a basically uneventful run this winter at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Uneventful, that is, until Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York, decided to use it for his political soapbox.

Even though Giuliani had never seen the art in "Sensation," he felt free to call it "sick stuff." He demanded that the museum - which, in an effort to build excitement no doubt, had sensationalized the show's content - either cancel the exhibition or forfeit badly needed financial support that it gets from the City of New York. The museum's instant response was "the show will go on," but Giuliani's campaign quickly garnered plenty of other fellow righteous types claiming to be crusaders for morality and decency.

That there was an outcry over art being shown in a museum that receives public funding isn't noteworthy in and of itself. These kinds of ill-informed, politically based, moralistic outbursts have been a theme of the last ten years; shows have been canceled and grants annulled in the name of concern over a uproar from taxpayers. In fact, the public has proven to be more open and on the side of artistic freedom than the so-called protectors of public decency. Time and time again, audiences have made it clear that they want to see things for themselves and make up their own minds.

I remember the first time I saw the "Sensation" show. It was in the autumn of 1997 in London, a short while after the exhibition first opened. There were some initial outcries about "Sensation" then as well - due to the fact that some of the works take on hot-button subjects such as sex, religion, and animal slaughter - but all the hoopla calmed down once viewers started to actually experience the works and get the chance to understand what they are about. When I visited the exhibition at the Royal Academy it was packed, and viewers seemed to be taking a lot of time to look at the works and read the wall labels. I recall being impressed that so many people seemed to have a genuine curiosity about contemporary art.

Most people who have seen "Sensation" in one of its venues seem to wonder what all the fuss was about. This is not to say that the show is without great art or some things that shock. It has all of that and more. Among its roster, "Sensation" features a number of artists who have been introduced to the international audience in the pages of Interview, and it also includes work by artists who to my mind are unremarkable. The point isn't that "Sensation" is the best, most consistent show around, but rather that it deserves to be seen.

The hysteria around shows like "Sensation" needs to be seen too. It isn't about protecting people. When the cultural police get started on their censorship sprees, they often use words like perverted or sick; Giuliani immediately went for this kind of rhetoric - which always sends shivers up the spine because of its precedence in the language of Nazi Germany, when Hitler called art and artists degenerate. We're on the brink of a new century. Isn't it time that these self-appointed cultural saviors stopped trying to save us?

Thank goodness there are people who are more interested in facing the big issues than trying to repress them. One such movie director, Kevin Smith, has just experienced the kind of moral posturing that goes on when someone confronts taboos. Smith's much anticipated movie, Dogma, which tackles religious belief, didn't find itself in a quagmire because of government funding, but its chance to see the light of day was threatened for a while because of its affiliations with Disney, who was made nervous by the film's content. For our piece on this daring movie, which begins on page 102, we talk to Alanis Morissette, who plays Dogma's kind, benevolent, and knowing God.

In Dogma, Morissette doesn't actually say anything - but her silence says it all. It's a quiet so different from the noise made by all those claiming to know what God wants.