Rock Hall’s Chief Has Trivia to Learn : Pop music: Dennis Barrie knows how to run a museum and isn’t afraid of controversy. In his last job, he was busted for showing Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs.

At first glance, Dennis Barrie seems an odd choice to be named director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, a post to which he was appointed last week. He’s widely renowned as a curator and historian in the “high art” world of galleries and museums but brings few credentials from the “low art”--i.e., rock ‘n’ roll--realm.

On the other hand, Barrie does have something in common with a good number of the musical superstars who’ll be permanently enshrined in the Hall of Fame upon its opening in Cleveland in 1995.

He’s been busted.

“That’s true, there does seem to be at least a kind of brotherhood of bonding there,” Barrie said, laughing at the correlation of his legendary indictment on art-related obscenity charges with veteran rockers’ legal run-ins.

But, philosophically, the connection isn’t strictly a joke. Barrie’s 1990 trial for obscenity and child pornography charges was brought on when the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, under his direction, presented a traveling exhibition of the photographs of the late Robert Mapplethorpe, including controversial nudes.

Barrie and his museum were subsequently acquitted--unlike the Bobby Fuller Four, he fought the law and he won--and not before he presented a well-publicized defense that made him a hero to many free-speech activists.

“It was interesting, the whole Mapplethorpe thing about freedom of expression,” Barrie said in an interview Friday from his Cincinnati office. “I believe very strongly, obviously, in the issue. It’s not what I’ve spent my whole life doing, but certainly I’ve gained some serious notoriety about it, and it’s about something I fundamentally believe in. And the rock world’s been always pushing the envelope, as they say, in terms of what’s permissible or acceptable or even legal in the society.

“And so I think there ought to be some sympatico. They’ve put rock groups on trial for the content of their music. Rock’s always been a little dangerous for each generation, from Elvis on. So I do think we have something in common.”

Barrie’s reputation as an articulate advocate of the controversial and as a serious museum director both figured into the board’s surprising decision to hire him.

“They could’ve easily hired somebody from the music world, or they could’ve easily hired somebody from, say, the Disney/EPCOT kind of world,” said Barrie. “Not to say any of that is wrong, but that would have indicated that this is just an attraction, just Disneyland up north on the lake.

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“But I think they were looking for that museum credibility, to say that this is something of substance as well as being a wonderful attraction. Everybody on the board was concerned that this be a real experience, as opposed to just shopping-mall excitement.

“We’re going to have to convince foundations that we’re serious about education, and that students can walk into the Rock Hall of Fame and Museum and come out with something substantive, not just a tribute to Chuck Berry--that when they come in they’ll understand what shaped the last half of the 20th Century. And this music did as much as anything.”

Although you might think some patrons of the popular and not-so-popular arts would be suspicious of Barrie’s appointment, he said he’s gotten nothing but support from his museum-directing contemporaries: “It might surprise a few of them but, to a person, the ones I’ve talked with are thrilled. They think this is a natural kind of continuum of our world.

“There is this whole thing about high and low , but they fuse quite often, as you know. And I think that popular culture--I’m not gonna call it ‘low’ anymore--is probably the most powerful force on Earth, particularly American popular culture, and museums have to contend with the impact it has on their audiences. And I think my colleagues sense that.”

What about folks on the rock ‘n’ roll side of things, though? Has anyone tried to put him through the trivia ringer or make him . . .

“Take a test? Like: ‘Who’s the fifth Beatle?’ There’s been a little bit of that. In the interview process, particularly in New York with the music industry people, people asked me, ‘Who’s your favorite group’ and so forth.

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“Do I know every bit of rock trivia? No. Can I name the drummer of every group? No. But I grew up with rock. I’m 46, so while I was a bit young for Buddy Holly, by the ‘60s I knew the music and have stayed pretty aware ever since.” (For an erstwhile art-world outlaw, Berrie’s tastes are fairly mainstream: His personal favorites largely come from what he calls the “English intellectual” school, like Peter Gabriel and Sting, plus Ireland’s U2.)

Part of Barrie’s challenge will be to give the tourists what they want while providing provocative, potentially controversial exhibits too.

“I would hope that it is not just a walk down memory lane. Obviously we associate music with moments in our lives, but I would not want this to be static, that you’d think the era we’re discussing started somewhere in the early ‘50s and ended with the British Invasion or something. We have to be as current as we are historic. And if it doesn’t deal with issues, I don’t think it would be true to the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll.

“You could do wonderful exhibitions on rock artists as social activists--Sting and the rain forests, or John Mellencamp and the floods in Missouri and Iowa, rock and sexuality. . . . I’m excited about that. I don’t want it to be just, ‘Hey, this is what happened in ’55.’ ”

After many years of fund-raising, the Hall of Fame finally broke ground in Cleveland in June--”they’re pumping water out of the site now,” he noted--and won’t open for another two years. Barrie makes the move north from Cincinnati next month. In the meantime, since the announcement was made Wednesday, he’s been getting a quick education in what it’s like to be deluded by the fruitcakes on the fringes of rock ‘n’ roll.

“Every time I hang up I have 18 more voice-mail messages waiting--everything from somebody who’s written a rock opera who said it’s the chance of a lifetime for the Hall of Fame and will outdo ‘Tommy,’ to someone who wanted to sell me a ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ painting. So here we go, right?”