ART

An exhibit of sexually explicit photos that stirred a national debate over public funding of the arts drew an overflow crowd in Hartford, Conn., and a handful of protesters in its first showing over the weekend since the uproar in the nation’s capital. The late Robert Mapplethorpe’s collection includes photographs of homosexual acts as well as more conventional nudes, celebrity portraits and still lifes of flowers. About 15 religious activists picketed, denouncing the exhibit as “gay pornography,” but officials said 2,000 people paid to see the show, more than four times the usual Saturday attendance. Conservatives in Congress, led by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), were angered to learn that the Mapplethorpe exhibit at Washington’s Corcoran Gallery of Art originally was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.