First Lady Sees 2 Ways to Look at Museum Flap

Art fused with politics Monday as an exhibit including elephant dung on a painting of the Virgin Mary became the latest issue in the duel between Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Giuliani--who like the first lady is an all-but-declared candidate for the Senate from New York--has threatened to cut $7 million in funding to the Brooklyn Museum of Art if it goes ahead with the show on Saturday. He has called the exhibit, which also features bisected animals and a topless woman in the place of Jesus at the Last Supper, “sick” and offensive.

Mrs. Clinton said that the museum shouldn’t lose its funding over the exhibit. “It’s not appropriate to penalize and punish an institution such as the Brooklyn Museum,” she said during an appearance at a Harlem school.

At the same time, she said, she shares “the feeling that I know many New Yorkers have that there are parts of this exhibit that would be deeply offensive.”

“I would not go to see this exhibit,” she added.