Ruling Asked on Mapplethorpe Exhibit : Pornography? Museum Inquires in Effort to Sidestep Sheriff

A museum planning to exhibit sexually explicit photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe has taken the unusual step of asking a court to decide whether they violate local obscenity laws.

The private Contemporary Arts Center hopes to forestall the sheriff’s threat to file obscenity charges against the museum when it opens the six-week exhibit April 6.

Sheriff Simon Leis, a veteran anti-smut campaigner, has called some of the pictures “criminally obscene” and said he will take action against the exhibit if police do not.

Nine of the 175 photographs in the show depict homosexual activity and sadomasochistic sex acts. The pictures led Congress last year to limit federal support for the arts after Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) labeled the photos obscene.

The museum Tuesday filed a petition for a jury trial in Municipal Court. A trial date was not immediately set. Museum officials said they expect a ruling before the exhibit opens.

“It may be unorthodox for the person displaying the material to initiate this action, but in this case it is the common-sense thing to do,” said Marc Mezibov, a lawyer for the museum.

The show is an attempt to broaden artistic horizons in a city that has closed every adult bookstore and prosecuted publisher Larry Flynt for distributing Hustler magazine, museum officials said.

“I think there are people in the community who are a little embarrassed about the community’s tendency to cave in to censorship,” said Jack Sawyer, curator at the center.

Chad Wick resigned last week as chairman of the board of the Contemporary Arts Center, saying opponents of the exhibit were exerting heavy pressure on his employer, the Central Trust Co.

Last summer, the private Corcoran Gallery in Washington canceled an exhibit of the Mapplethorpe photos, but they were later shown at the Washington Project for the Arts and appeared without incident in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Hartford, Conn., and Berkeley, Calif.