Black Artist At Center Of Furor Over Brooklyn Museum Art Exhibit

The Brooklyn Museum of Art (BMA) in New York recently opened a controversial art exhibit which includes a painting of a Black Madonna, despite threats from the New York mayor who said he would cut all city funds to the museum if the exhibit is held.

At issue is the exhibit, Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection. The controversy centers around The Holy Virgin Mary, a painting of a Black Madonna decorated with elephant dung and pornographic cutouts of women's buttocks and genitals.

The controversial exhibit also features works of art that show a dissected cow and pig as well as castrated male dummies lashed to a tree.

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said he would cut all city funding to the museum--$7 million, or about one-third of its budget--if the exhibit is shown. The mayor, who is a Catholic, called the exhibit "sick" and said the Virgin Mary painting is Catholic-bashing.

"As the mayor of the city of New York, am I going to approve the hard-earned dollars of the people of this city supporting this?" Giuliani said on NBC's "Meet the Press".

"I have to say no. And for standing up for that principle, I'm being attacked by the First Amendment hysterics," the mayor said.

At press time, the city of New York was withholding the city's October payment of the museum's $7 million annual funding.

The museum has since sued, saying with his financial threats, the mayor's act violates the museum's First Amendment rights to free expression.

The museum issued a press statement which said in part, "The museum is planning to open Sensation ... as scheduled and as planned. The BMA remains committed to resolving the dispute, but the ideals of the institution are not on the bargaining table."

More than 9,200 viewed the exhibit on its first day. It was the largest opening in the museum's 175-year history.

Chris Ofili, 31, a British-born artist of African descent, who created the Virgin Mary painting, told the New York Times: "I don't feel as though I have to defend it. The people who are attacking this painting are attacking their own interpretation, not mine. You never know what's going to offend people, and I don't feel it's my place to say any more."

Ofili, who is Roman Catholic, also said, "It all seems very distant and confusing to me. It's like a play, and somehow I got mentioned in the script. I think there's some bigger agenda here."

Some New Yorkers believe racism is at the center of the controversy.

"Europeans always see Africans negatively," activist Rev. Dr. Herbert Daughtry told his congregation at the Lord Pentecostal Church in Brooklyn.

"It's not the feces, but the face. It's not the picture, it's the pigmentation," he said.