Loida Perez compressed these thoughts through the cyber-mist:

>I have read lots of comments for either side on this list and I have not seen
>the eshibit but with all the heated debate I inted on going to see it.  I
>think that what the mayor is doing is wrong.  No one should judge for others
>what is right and what is wrong.  The mayor is acting like a stuburn father
>who is punishing his bratty children.  I think we all have enough
>intellegance to chose for ourselves what is right and what is wrong.  I
>probably would not have gone to see the exhibit if this big fuss had not
>occured, now I am very curious as to what is so bad about it that it needs to
>be banished.

This always happens -- it's the Law of Inverse Public Relations from
Censorhip -- the more you censor something, the more exposure you provide
it.  But I don't think Guiliani and the conservatives of Mapplethorpe/Two
Live Crew/Piss Christ/Last Temptation-censorhip fame really care whether
or not they increase the notoriety of what they are condemning.  For them
the whole effort is about their political visibility among right-wing
constituencies during political races, and they are more than willing to
trash the first amendment in order to get the network news producers
calling.  Given the timing of when these public servants choose to
express their righteous indignation, one would think that the nation's
curators only schedule provocative art exhibitions within eighteen months
of a national election.

The New York mayor pins his opposition to the Brooklyn Museum's
exhibition on the issue of public funding.  Hmmm...let's see,
now..."public" means everyone and public-funding comes out of
*everyone's* pockets.  "Private" funding is just the opposite.  If a
group of any particular political or religious conviction wants to create
a foundation that funds only certain kinds of art, it is free to do so.
Guiliani has the two mixed up.  He wants to treat public money for the
arts as if it operates like a private foundation -- as if its
expenditures are limited to addressing values of only a certain segment
of the vast public, or to what any politician claims as his or her
"majority."  "Public" does not mean "the majority" -- it means the
majority and every minority.  The U.S. constitution goes to great pains
to protect against the tyranny of the majority, and nowhere is that
principle more vulnerable to decay than when politicians try to say that
public monies earmarked for the support of free expression should be
co-opted by what only the majority wants to hear from our nation's
artists.

You cannot separate public money for the arts from the first amendment.
Ideological restrictions on the former directly violate the latter.


     _________________________________________________________________
     S t e p h e n    N o w l i n       Director, Williamson Gallery

     Vice President                     Producer, Art Center Online
     Art Center College of Design       www.artcenter.edu
     _________________________________________________________________

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