New Exhibition Elevates Controversy to Art Form

From the “Danger Art” T-shirts and knickknacks for sale in the gift shop to the plexiglass shield that now guards Chris Ofili’s portrait of “The Holy Virgin Mary,” visitors to the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s new exhibition “Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection” will know that they are entering controversial territory.

Amid ongoing attacks from city officials and even the U.S. Senate over the 90 or so recent works by young artists--from Ofili’s black Madonna with elephant dung on her breast to Damien Hirst’s animals suspended in formaldehyde--museum officials on Thursday unveiled the new exhibition to a press pack of about 250. Officials added that they were expecting 1,000 people at an evening preview that night that originally had been expected to draw 200. The exhibition, which New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has called anti-Catholic, is scheduled to open its doors to the public Saturday.

Giuliani, backed by a number of Catholic and Jewish leaders, has said he will pull the museum’s approximately $7 million in annual city funding, which is one-third of its budget. A nearly $500,000 payment is due today.

Late Thursday, the city also filed suit to eject the museum from its imposing structure, under a lease arrangement that dates back to 1893. The city argued that the $9.75 entrance fee for “Sensation” hasn’t been approved by the mayor or the parks commissioner, as the lease specifies, and that the exhibition “will neither educate nor enlighten the diverse public,” as the lease requires.

The museum, which garnered somewhat belated support from other city museums earlier in the week, on Tuesday filed a 1st Amendment lawsuit, and its stance has varied from serious outrage over the free speech issues to seeming revelry in the controversy.

Poster for Show Carries Warning

Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman said Thursday that “exploring and celebrating our differences . . . is what this exhibit is all about,” adding that while “I hope people will see this exhibit, I also hope they know that they have a right not to choose to see this exhibit.” Meanwhile, the gift shop’s poster for the show reads: “Health Warning. The contents of this exhibition may cause shock, vomiting, confusion, panic, euphoria, and anxiety. If you suffer from high blood pressure, a nervous disorder, or palpitations, you should consult your doctor before viewing this exhibition.”

A small group of civic leaders, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Lichtenstein and the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, pastor at Brooklyn’s House of the Lord Church, turned out to support what they said were the museum’s free speech rights. In an interview, Daughtry said he found the Ofili Madonna “difficult to grasp.” But he added, “I am tolerant because I understand . . . that Ofili is speaking out of a different mind-set and culture.”

Lehman called “absolute rubbish” the contention by the mayor’s staff on Wednesday that the museum was working behind the scenes to help inflate the value of the artworks in the show--which are part of the collection of British advertising executive Charles Saatchi--for a future sale at Christie’s auction house. The exhibition is to travel to Australia and Tokyo after it closes in New York on Jan. 9. Ed Dolman, managing director of Christie’s, which helped sponsor the show, also denied plans to sell the collection.

First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who is representing the museum, said it was “sad, sad to see the depths to which the defenders of the mayor will go . . . to defend his indefensible position.”

Ongoing Police Presence Likely

Ofili’s “Virgin Mary” is the only one of the exhibition’s works to get special protection, due to what Lehman called “the incredibly high level of rhetoric surrounding it.” A dozen police officers stood guard outside the museum Thursday morning, part of what is likely to be an ongoing police presence due to the numerous demonstrations--in favor of and against the exhibition--scheduled over the next several days.

The press crowd, many of whom arrived from Manhattan on two buses the museum chartered for the subway-shy, was triple the 80 or so who turned out for the opening of the museum’s recent high-profile “Impressionists in Winter” preview.

Visitors won’t have to hunt far for the most controversial works: Hirst’s formaldehyde-suspended tiger shark, called “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” is the centerpiece of the first room, which also contains Marc Quinn’s “Self,” a frozen head, kept in a refrigerated display case, that is molded from nine pints of the artist’s own blood.

A second tiny room showcases Ofili’s glittery gold and pale blue African Madonna, which rests on two elephant-dung clumps and is surrounded by cutouts of bare and thong-clad buttocks “clipped from porno magazines,” according to the free audio guide narrated by singer David Bowie.

Hirst’s pickled animals, including a cow cut into 12 pieces, a lamb, a wall of fish and a bisected pig, are scattered throughout the sprawling, 1 1/2-floor exhibition, as are other nonreligious Ofili works.

Not all the works in the show are likely to elicit controversy, however. “Myra” was one of the most controversial works when the show ran in Britain, but most Americans are unlikely to recognize the blown-up face of the British serial child killer.

Other pieces are seemingly potentially much more controversial than those already singled out by the politicians, including two sculptures by Jake and Dinos Chapman that feature young girls, nude except for their designer running shoes and many with male genitalia for noses or ears, fused in sexual positions. Those two works drew expressions of disgust from a number of journalists at the preview.

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POLITICAL DUNGHILL

Mayor Giuliani exploits irrational fears. Commentary by Christopher Knight. F1