Controversial Art Exhibit Closes; Cincinnati Legal Battle Remains

A controversial exhibit of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe closed its seven-week display in Cincinnati on Saturday, but a legal tangle remains to be settled.

Several of the photos by the late Mapplethorpe depict erotic homosexual situations. On the day the exhibit opened, a Hamilton County grand jury indicted the Contemporary Arts Center and its director, Dennis Barrie, on charges of pandering obscenity and depicting children in the nude.

Several pretrial hearings have been conducted, but no trial date has been set. A judge is considering requests by the Contemporary Arts Center and Barrie to throw out the indictment.

The furor over the exhibition received extensive news coverage, and the show drew 75,000 viewers, three times more than any other exhibit in the history of the gallery.

Although the exhibit is leaving Cincinnati and is scheduled to be displayed in Boston next month, Barrie says what eventually happens in the Cincinnati courts will be important.

“Every museum in the country will be watching because every museum realizes it is also on trial,” Barrie said. “They know if the Contemporary Arts Center loses, every museum in the country will be open to policing by law enforcement agencies. The libraries, the bookstores, the schools are next.”

The exhibit generated a classic arts versus obscenity battle in Cincinnati, a city in which public officials have traditionally strictly enforced anti-obscenity laws.