Giuliani Forms ‘Decency’ Panel to Review Public Art

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani began assembling a task force to monitor “decency” in tax-sponsored art exhibits Friday, as a museum opened a show including a photograph depicting Jesus as a naked woman.

“If you want to display viciousness, hatred, ignorance, and you want to display anti-Catholicism, racism or anti-Semitism, then you go find a private museum that wants to pay for this or a private sponsor that wants to pay for this,” the mayor said in a radio interview Friday morning.

“But you cannot use taxpayers’ dollars.”

The mayor’s ire was prompted by Renee Cox’s photograph “Yo Mama’s Last Supper,” one of 188 works in a new show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Cox, who posed nude as the Christ image, is surrounded by 12 black apostles in the five-panel piece.

Cox, a Jamaican-born artist who was raised Catholic, has said the image highlights legitimate criticisms of the church, including its refusal to ordain women as priests.

The work is “beautiful,” said Tammy Hindle, who viewed the exhibit, including the work of 94 contemporary black photographers. “She’s celebrating the part of God that is woman.”

Everton McIntyre, a Pentecostal Christian and a middle school art teacher, disagreed.

“The Lord’s Supper means a lot to me. And her being nude bothers me. Jesus was never nude,” he said.

Museum director Arnold Lehman said in a statement that the work serves an important purpose.

“Throughout history, the artist’s responsibility has been to make us think,” he said. “The best artists walk blindfolded on a high wire every time they go to work. We owe them no less than our unwavering commitment.”

The same museum was at the center of a similar debate in 1999 when an exhibit including a dung-decorated painting of the Virgin Mary sparked a heated six-month legal battle.