The "honorable" Mayor Guilani knows nothing about art, art history or
cultural expression. I was raised as a Roman Catholic Brooklynite, but
trained as an art historian, and one of the first things one learns as an
intelligent person is that to fully understand a work of art (or another
person, another culture, etc.), one must put one's own politics aside.

This is so obviously an attempt of the mayor to try to hone in on the
catholic vote for his upcoming senate race it is pathetic! When did he ever
comment on an art exhibition in all of his years as the Benito Mussolini of
New York City??? This is futher a continuation of his attack on the poor in
New York City (Would he do this to the Met? Would he dare?). This
exhibition has been planned for Brooklyn for over a year and he and his
people have been aware of it and the works in it and the controversy it
caused in London for the entire time. NOW, the week of the opening, he has
a problem?

PLENTY of my tax dollars go into grants that I do not personally approve of
-- yet there is nothing we can do about it. This is the price we pay for
living in a "free" country, as someone else on the list more elegantly
stated.

And, by the way, who is the mayor to decide for me what I should and should
not look at? A man that has no art training whatsoever is going to decide
for ME what I should view? HE doesn't approve so no one should see for
themselves and make their own decisions? Free expression and free speech
are obviously NOT part of his agenda.

The bottom line is that I do not want the government telling me what art I
should and can view for myself and what I can't. I'll be at the Brooklyn
Museum's opening party this weekend with a drink in one hand and my
checkbook in another! I'll make an extra donation to the Museum if only in
spite of the mayor.

I suggest the mayor go to the Whitney this weekend and contemplate "Piss
Christ" by Andres Serrano -- see if he can try to make sense of it all.

Caterina Pierre

Art Historian and Brooklynite (and damn proud of it).

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