Controversy Fuels Rush to Museum : Art: Viewers defend ‘Self-Portrait,’ which a councilman called obscene.

The phone lines were lit like Christmas trees, and visitors came in droves. There’s nothing like a little controversy, and a lot of publicity.

There was both Thursday at Newport Harbor Art Museum, thanks to Newport Beach City Councilman John W. Hedges, who had earlier criticized as obscene an artwork at the museum, which got a $10,000 grant from the city this year.

Newspapers this week reported that Hedges targeted “Self-Portrait,” a large piece which includes video images of genitalia, to express his disapproval at a City Council study session over city funding of the contemporary art museum.

The artwork, which Lilla LoCurto and William Outcault created after a heterosexual friend died of AIDS, includes four stacked video monitors flashing pictures of body parts--torsos, hips and thighs, lower legs. The idea, the artists say, is that anyone can get AIDS.

Thursday’s Daily Pilot included a rebuttal to Hedges from the museum’s director, Michael Botwinick, who wrote that the $10,000 city grant was earmarked exclusively for education programs for local students. Encouraging readers to judge the artwork firsthand, Botwinick wrote that admission would be waived for visitors toting Thursday’s Pilot.

By late Thursday afternoon, the museum had topped by about 30 its average Thursday attendance, welcoming roughly 100 visitors, spokeswoman Maxine Gaiber said. In addition, many callers wanted to know the museum’s hours, how to get there and when “Self-Portrait” would come down (Dec. 5), Gaiber said.

“I don’t think we’re going to see the full effects of this until the weekend,” she said.

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“I spent some time in the galleries, and everybody I talked to was positive about the piece and kind of incredulous. They said, ‘This is it? This is what’s causing all the controversy?’ ”

Visitors also wrote letters to Hedges with stationery and stamps supplied by the museum, and dialed the Pilot’s public feedback number on a phone installed in the “Self-Portrait” gallery.

Botwinick said the motive in supplying the stationery, installing the gallery phone and waiving admission was to “get people to understand they don’t have to let Hedges make up their minds. They can come and look at the piece and make up their own minds.”

Hedges’ true objection, Botwinick said, wasn’t public funding of a museum that would show such an artwork, but homosexuality itself. Hedges’ wife, Maria, wrote in the Pilot on Thursday that AIDS is caused by “deviant behavior” and that the artwork is “about promoting homosexuals.”

Hedges later Thursday said: “Yes, I think AIDS in general is caused by deviant behavior, (meaning) homosexuality or IV drug use and prostitution. And as far as the ‘Self-Portrait,’ the stated purpose of it, if you read the description, is for people who view it to contemplate their gender identification, and how the AIDS virus enters the body.

“I think the piece attempts to legitimize homosexuality.”

But Hedges called Botwinick’s reaction to his criticism a “typical liberal response.” Liberals, Hedges said, “resort to name-calling when they don’t have any other answer or justification for what they do, (such as) the expenditure of public funds on garbage, and the parading of children in front of it.”

Hedges has consistently opposed city arts funding and cast the sole no vote when the council voted on the museum’s grant in August. That’s the typical vote breakdown, said Phyllis Drayton, chairwoman of the city’s Arts Commission, which recommends arts grants to the council.

“We really almost always have had wonderful support from the rest of City Council,” Drayton said. “So we’ll just keep marching along.”

But longtime arts commissioner Howard Herzog said he believes most Newport Beach residents, like Hedges, oppose city support of the arts. They would rather see the money spent on such essentials as police and fire services, Herzog said.

Councilwoman Evelyn R. Hart, however, said her support of the museum is unshaken.

Hart had not seen “Self-Portrait,” but said Thursday, “I have no reason not to support recommendations of the art commission if they were to recommend a grant to Newport Harbor Art Museum.”