Culture Wars: NPO Art and Public Funds

Writes Wyszomirski, "For much of the decade, controversies raged around government funding for the arts and about the nonprofit institutions that were involved in the "culture wars." Debates concerning allegedly obscene, pornographic, blasphemous, or otherwise offensive art exhibited in museums and galleries or performed on stage and in theaters raised public awareness and conc ern about the content of the so-called "high arts" that are generally seen as the purview of the nonprofits arts sector." (pg 195)

No image better epitomizes this "culture war" than Chris Ofili's elephant dung-"splattered" Holy Virgin Mary displayed as a part of the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s controversial exhibit Sensation ("splattered" was the term used by critics who had not viewed the piece; truly, the dung is carefully sculpted into a bare left breast and allegedly meant to symbolize fertility, as dung was used as a fertilizer in the artist’s native Nigeria). Though the book references the exhibit for the financing by "people with a direct commercial interest in the work of the artists" and the commercial issues it raised, it serves as a better example of the "culture war" described by Wyszomirski.

The 1999 U.S. premier of the British exhibit brought with it a host of angry critics. Catholics gnashed their teeth and declared the piece "blasphemous." Activists threw horse manure at the Brooklyn Museum and succeeded in pouring white paint on the body of the Virgin. But the worst behavior came from New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (what did he do with all those homeless people? New York Republican dark magic?).

Under the battle cry of the exhibit's "disrespectful" handling of Christianity, Giuliani withheld the museum’s monthly local funding and threatened eviction unless the exhibit was sent back from whence it came. After the case went to court, the museum was the victor and the exhibit stayed.

Giuliani’s team should have done a little more research into public opinion before knotting the City purse strings. In 1999, The First Amendment Center commissioned the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut to conduct a study of Americans' attitudes toward freedom of expression issues arising from the Brooklyn Museum's decision to host the controversial "Sensation" exhibit.
Six in ten Americans (60%) thought that the government should not have the power to ban the "Sensation" exhibit, even though the Brooklyn Museum is partially supported by public funds. The same proportion (60%) also felt that the government did not have the right to withdraw public funds from the museum because of its display of controversial artwork.
CPANDA.org - Cultural Policy and the Arts National Data Archive

Had the mayor realized that most Americans were not in favor of using funding as a means of content control, perhaps he wouldn’t have ended up with so much egg on his face. In the end, Giuliani’s attempt at censorship only made the exhibit more popular and increased attendance.

*****
The major source of funding for the Brooklyn Museum comes from New York City tax dollars through the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs. I’ll pose the same question I asked last time: does some state (or in this case city) funding allow for some control?

Do the study’s findings surprise you? Is 60% a surprisingly small or large percentage in support of the creative independence of nonprofit art?

Is there a line? Should funding be withheld for the truly obscene (and what is that?)? Are violent images still worthy of public funds (one of the other pieces of the exhibit that received far less media attention was the 25-foot high black and white portrait of Myra Hindley, a young woman infamous for the torture and murder of several London children, painted out of small child-sized handprints)? Should curators be given the burden of proof for the social value of an exhibit or piece? Seems like a very slippery slope.


P.S. Less of an debate issue, but certainly a point of note: The "butterflies’ surrounding the Virgin are actually magazine cutouts of buttocks. The artist offered no explanation for the flying tushies. Thought you should know…