But the two men haven’t been laughing–or even talking–since the mayor blew up three weeks ago over the controversial exhibition, “Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection.” Giuliani threatened to cut all city funding to the museum–$7 million a year, about one third of its operating budget–unless the show was canceled. The mayor was especially outraged by “The Holy Virgin Mary,” a painting by Chris Ofili, who used, among other materials, elephant dung. “This is sick stuff,” Giuliani said.
Lehman had been hoping to make a splash with this exhibition, but the uproar was much more than he’d bargained for. Negotiations between the museum and the city quickly broke down, and the museum filed a suit in federal court on First Amendment grounds. The city countered with a suit of its own. All the front-page publicity drummed up even bigger crowds than expected, for both the show’s gala preview and the opening to the public last Saturday. Supporters and opponents of the exhibition held rallies at the museum. The museum installed metal detectors and put a Plexiglas shield in front of the by-now infamous Virgin Mary painting. Battlelines were drawn.
To the world beyond the Hudson River, the escalating flap may have seemed like just the latest chapter in the culture wars that began in 1989 over the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and a photograph by Andres Serrano called “Piss Christ.” But this was New York, the company town of the avant-garde: to the art world, it was as if the mayor of Detroit decided to ban cars inside the city limits. The clash went beyond the classic debate over how–or even whether–the government should fund the arts: everyone involved seemed to have something else at stake. The mayor was looking to appeal to upstate voters in his New York Senate race, the museum needed a hit show to put itself on the map and the city’s other cultural institutions were looking for a way to show solidarity without giving Giuliani an excuse to cut off their city subsidies. And of course, there was Charles Saatchi, the reclusive British adman and collector whose art works were on display. The mayor’s office charged that he only stood to gain from the scandal, which will inevitably increase the value of his collection.
Two years ago when Lehman returned to his native Brooklyn to take over the museum, after 18 years running the Baltimore Museum of Art, he had a mission. The museum had become a sleepy institution, with drastically flagging attendance figures. Lehman needed to make it vital to an increasingly diverse community, including nearly 5,000 artists who now live in Brooklyn, refugees of high Manhattan rents. In London on business, Lehman happened to catch the “Sensation” show at the Royal Academy. It was creating a furor, and there were lines around the block. “You had young kids with green hair, and you had the charming older ladies,” he recalls. “People were truly enthralled.” Lehman admits he wants to attract a big audience, but he was equally impressed by the show. “I knew a lot of these artists’ work,” he says. And much of the art was indeed sensational, starting with Damien Hirst’s carcasses of a cow or pig, sliced to reveal the innards, suspended in tanks of formaldehyde.
Lehman negotiated to bring “Sensation” to Brooklyn and ordered up a buzz-seeking ad campaign that included a mock health warning: “The contents of this exhibition may cause shock, vomiting, confusion, panic, euphoria and anxiety.” Then the day that Hurricane Floyd blew through New York City, the mayor began to whip up his own tempest. A reporter brought “The Holy Virgin Mary” painting in the upcoming show to the mayor’s attention. Days later, at a press conference, Giuliani blasted the show. “You don’t have a right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else’s religion,” he said. A Roman Catholic, the mayor says he has no problem making enemies in the art world (though it must have hurt when he was booed at the Metropolitan Opera last week, since opera is one art form he adores). “I represent a lot of people other than the elite of the city,” he told NEWSWEEK. Although no one knows what the upstate New York voters that Giuliani may be courting think about his stand, polls showed that both New York City residents and a nationwide sample were against shutting down the exhibition.
The evening after the mayor came out swinging, Lehman was in Manhattan at the opening of a new exhibit at the Whitney Museum. (Ironically, that show included Serrano’s “Piss Christ.”) He was mobbed by well-wishers, and Whitney director Maxwell Anderson offered some encouraging comments. But other than two formal letters signed by groups of museum directors, the New York museums have been silent on Giuliani’s attempt to dictate the content of an art exhibition. “I understand that there was a lot of pressure from board members not to alienate the mayor,” said Brenda Richardson, a curator who worked with Lehman in Baltimore. “They’re watching their funding.”
Privately, some members of the art world also admitted to being uncomfortable with aspects of the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition, especially, as the mayor’s office picked up on, the role of Saatchi. Unlike most museum exhibits, the show is drawn entirely from one private collection and Saatchi himself was heavily involved in mounting it. A passionate collector, he’s spent the past decade discovering young artists in Britain and buying up their work. Complicating the issue is the fact that Christie’s is one of the show’s sponsors–the same auction house that sold 130 artworks for Saatchi in London last December, some by the same artists whose works are being shown in Brooklyn. (Those proceeds went to charity.) But the charge that Saatchi will cash in by quickly selling the work in “Sensation” is off base since the show is traveling to Australia and Japan after its run in Brooklyn.
Meanwhile, all the noise surrounding the exhibition has distracted from the art itself. “The thing that’s so appalling,” says Lisa Phillips, the director of the New Museum in SoHo, “is that no one is looking at the work.” “The Holy Virgin Mary” has been referred to in the press and by city officials as “smeared” with dung when, in fact, one small mound of dung is deliberately placed on the painting. (Such small dung heaps are a hallmark in all his work, a connection to his African roots.)
While the dispute headed to the courts, most legal experts put their money on the Brooklyn Museum. “Once the city commences financing this kind of programming,” says lawyer Adam Cohen of Kane Kessler, “you can’t revoke the financing for unconstitutional grounds.” But the battle was clearly about more than the First Amendment. When asked about the criticism that he’s simply trying to get votes, the mayor shrugged. “What’s new? This is Giuliani. I speak my mind.”
