Patrons Drawn to Brooklyn ‘Sensation’

As New Yorkers had their first opportunity to see the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s controversial exhibition “Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection,” the museum put up metal detectors at its entrance on Friday and began handing out bright yellow fliers emblazoned with the words of the 1st Amendment.

The exhibition, which has drawn fire from New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for what he called its anti-Catholic bias, opens to the public today, and a museum representative said tickets for the day already are sold out.

By mid-Friday afternoon, a steady stream of museum members had filed in to see for themselves the controversial works, including Damien Hirst’s pickled animals and Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary,” a glittery blue and gold African Madonna, with elephant dung for a breast and cut-outs of porn magazine buttocks floating around her head.

Late in the day, as police looked on, pink-haired artists handing out “Hello, My Name is Art” badges mixed with gray-haired women and parents with babies at a museum rally organized by the New York Civil Liberties Union. Several hundred people turned out to hear two dozen speakers--including arts leaders, actress Susan Sarandon and playwright Wendy Wasserstein--defend the museum’s right to free speech. Today, the Catholic League and some Republican politicians have promised their own protest against the show.

The controversy has clogged the phone lines at the museum while giving the institution the attention boost its director has said he was seeking. A gala preview Thursday drew about 1,300, including celebrities, such as actor Steve Martin.

Adrienne Lampert, a 75-year-old psychotherapist, said she was at the Friday members’ preview “to see that people are free to make their own decisions. I do not understand why dung is used, but I’m here to see why.” Her friend, Marsha Wineburgh, 50, a psychoanalyst, added that “if Giuliani hadn’t been against it, I don’t know if I would be here.”

Christina Davis, 28, a poet, said she found many of the exhibition’s works provocative. Bertrand Simmons, a 71-year-old retired maintenance worker who traveled from the Bronx to Brooklyn for the first time in 15 years, said he enjoyed Ofili’s controversial work “most of all,” but found Hirst’s cut-up animals “too painful. I didn’t look at those too much.” Still, he stood outside the museum for several hours, leaning on his cane and holding a paper bag sign that read, “Freedom of Expression.”

Meanwhile, a poll by the New York Daily News and cable news New York 1 showed New Yorkers support the museum’s right to show the exhibit by a ratio of 2 to 1.

Giuliani has backed up his anti-exhibition rhetoric by promising to cut about $7 million in city funding for the museum--about one-third its annual budget--and filing suit late Thursday to evict the museum from city property.

Giuliani escalated his war of words on the show Friday, branding it “pedophiles on parade.”

“I believe that the use of public funds to have a portrait of a pedophile glorified is disgusting,” he said.

1st Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who is representing the museum, said Friday that the museum will fight the city’s eviction suit in court.

Earlier in the week, the museum filed a suit against the City of New York, claiming Giuliani’s actions were in violation of the 1st Amendment. On Friday, the museum amended its suit to add that the city’s action violates equal protection as provided for in the 14th Amendment. The complaint also states that Giuliani does not have the right to impound funds already authorized by the City Council, and the museum is seeking punitive damages from Giuliani for actions taken individually and in his official capacity as mayor.

Abrams said “the whole notion of trying to eject the museum from Brooklyn and New York is preposterous. The very fact of seeking ejection lends further weight to our 1st Amendment case that this is nothing more nor less than an effort by the mayor to punish the museum for defying him.”

The museum is still waiting to receive its latest installment, $500,000 of city funds, which is due the first week of every month.