According to a New Poll, Majority of Americans Say
the Museum Should Be Allowed to Display the Exhibit
First amendment cases the NYCLU has brought against Giuliani
Civil Liberties Union Urges Mayor to Withdraw Threats to
Brooklyn Museum Over Art Controversy
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, October 7, 1999
NEW YORK--In a 17-page "friend-of-the-court" brief submitted in federal court today, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union said that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani "flagrantly violated" the First Amendment in seeking to punish the Brooklyn Museum of Art over a controversial exhibit.
At issue is the "Sensation" show featuring the work of young British artists from the contemporary art collection of British advertising executive Charles Saatchi. Mayor Giuliani has denounced the art, which includes a painting of a black Virgin Mary that incorporates elephant dung, as "sick stuff," and is attempting to yank the museum's funding and terminate its lease.
According to news reports, the Mayor has said he would also cut off city financing to any other publicly supported cultural institution that mounts an exhibit that he considers an attack on religion.
But, as the civil liberties union points out in legal papers, such retaliation runs counter to the principles of the First Amendment. Both sides in the battle will enter court this Friday to present their arguments in the high-profile controversy.
The civil liberties union filed its brief on behalf of itself and the Creative Coalition, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Coalition Against Censorship.
In its brief, the groups argue that "the record, in this case, demonstrates clearly that the Mayor has flagrantly violated this well-established First Amendment prohibition against viewpoint discrimination."
According to the brief, "There are some publicly-funded institutions devoted to discourse and expression -- such as public universities, libraries and museums -- where the First Amendment functions to prevent the political branches of government from using the power of the purse to dictate the content of expression within such institutions In addition, First Amendment principles requiring procedural regularity render impermissible the Mayor's action in this case."
The case is The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences v. The City of New York and Rudolph Giuliani. The ACLU's friend-of-the-court brief is online at: http://www.aclu.org/court/Blyn_museum.html
Copyright 1999, American Civil Liberties Union
Reprinted with permission of the American Civil Liberties Union
http://www.aclu.org
Return to chronology 16 Feb 2001
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, February 16, 2001
NEW YORK--Mayor Giuliani has once again cast himself as the City's chief censor by proposing a decency panel in response to his latest dispute with the Brooklyn Museum over its selection of art. This time, the Mayor objects to a photograph depicting the Last Supper in which the Christ figure is portrayed as a nude black woman. Apparently without having ever seen the photo in its museum context, the Mayor had no trouble describing it as "outrageous" and "anti-Catholic."
The Mayor's reaction and his terminology are familiar, of course. Two years ago, the Mayor used similar language to justify his ill-fated effort to effectively shut down the Brooklyn Museum -- by withdrawing all City funding and terminating its lease -- because the Mayor was offended by what he regarded as certain sacrilegious images in the controversial "Sensations" exhibition. That effort was quickly and decisively declared unconstitutional by a federal court in New York, which reminded the Mayor that his executive powers did not include the authority to overrule the First Amendment, or to impose his personal tastes on New York City's museum visitors.
The notion of a decency panel is equally misguided and equally unconstitutional, especially when its unambiguous purpose is to impose an official orthodoxy on New York's cultural institutions. In floating the idea, the Mayor suggested that the concept had been endorsed by the United States Supreme Court in a 1998 case brought by Karen Finley and several other artists against the National Endowment of the Arts. He is wrong on multiple counts. While it is true that the NEA's decency standards were upheld in the Finley case, the Court's decision contained two important caveats.
First, the Court noted that the decency standards were never intended to be a litmus test for government funding; instead, they were merely one consideration among many that the government could take into account in deciding whether to award a grant.
Second, the Court clearly indicated in the Finley case that the government could not use the decency standards as an excuse to withhold funding because it disagreed with the views expressed by a particular artist or a particular work of art.
Whether accurate or not, describing a work as "anti-Catholic" is precisely the sort of ideological judgment that cannot be the basis for funding decisions under the Finley case.
Finally, although the Mayor's proposal for a decency panel was short on details, there is every reason to believe based on the past record that his ultimate goal is to deny all public funding to any museum that displays "indecent" art, even if the art in question is not actually supported by public funds.
The constitutional rule prohibiting such retaliation was well-established long before the Finley case ever reached the Supreme Court.
In 1984, for example, the Supreme Court held that public broadcasting stations could not be penalized with the loss of public funds because they engaged in political editorializing with private money. More generally, the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that the First Amendment imposes the most severe limits on the government's ability to interfere with institutions that are dedicated to free speech, like museums and universities.
The Mayor is too good a lawyer not to know all of this, and not to know that the Constitution draws a sharp dividing line between matters of private faith and matters of public policy. Mayor Giuliani is plainly free to use his bully pulpit to preach in favor of racial and religious tolerance. Indeed, the City might have been a very different place if he had used that pulpit more often during the past seven years. What he may not do is abandon the pulpit and just act like a bully, leaving the First Amendment as a casualty in his wake.
NOTE: To read more about the ACLU's involvement in the Brooklyn Museum "Sensation" case, go to: http://www.aclu.org/features/censorship_arts.html
To read the ACLU's news release issued about the Supreme Court decision in NEA v. Finley, go to: http://www.aclu.org/news/n062598b.html
Copyright 2001, American Civil Liberties Union
Reprinted with permission of the American Civil Liberties Union
http://www.aclu.org
Return to chronology 16 Feb 2001
A five feet tall concrete replica of Michelangelo's masterpiece statue David has been covered up. The anatomically correct original is considered a masterpiece, but the copy has caused controversy outside a shop in Lake Alfred, Florida. The statue now has a strategically placed towel pinned round the biblical figure's waist area because it was found to be too obscene for some people.
Said Jeanne Johnson, "I didn't even know it was art. To me, it's just a naked man standing on the side of the road. Once the girls saw it, I found myself in a position where I had to explain what a penis is." Ms. Johnson, owner of a nearby barber shop, complained about the statue. Along with a handful of others.
The complaints prompted Jim Drumm, City Manager, to research the city's code and statutes to see if the sculpture violated obscenity laws.
"There's nothing legally we could do about it since we can't regulate art, but the people were demanding that we do something. As a matter of courtesy, we asked the store owners to put a cloth around the statue." said Mr Drumm.
Chuck Cole had put the statue outside the front of his Fountain and Falls shop on the main road through the town. He said: "If I were standing on some street corner, that would be different. But this is a representation of a classic masterpiece. It's art not obscenity."
This more modest version of David has still been attracting attention, howeve, according to the Tampa Tribune. Tourists have been posing for photographs next to the statue; with a few taking a peak under the loincloth.
Mr. Cole intends to replace the plain white cloth with a leopard print bandana. "I figure if I'm going to have to cover him up, I might as well do it in style," he said.
[She didn't even know it was art? What the freakin' Hell did she think it was?
The issue of explaining male anatomy to her daughters is, I will admit, a stickier point. Certainly a parent has the right to determine the course of their children's educations, however, I also believe that she has almost certainly blown the incident out of all proportion. Most people seem to think that when a child asks about sexual matters -- vis a vis "where do babies come from" for example -- that they must have explained to them, then and there, the entire field of human reproduction and sexuality. Hogtwaddle.
When children ask such questions they don't want long winded technical answers that will confuse them by being way over their heads. They want something short and simple enough to understand but that doesn't condescend or insult their intelligence. Just as long as it's honest. Ms. Johnson didn't have to explain what a penis is beyond "Oh, that's just what boys use when they go to the bathroom to pee. It's what makes them different from girls." --MN]
Return to chronology 26 Apr 2001
For Immediate Release - August 6, 2001
For more information contact:
Svetlana Mintcheva, National Coalition Against Censorship - 212/807-6222 x 23
David Greene, First Amendment Project - 510/208-7743
Jennifer Ring, ACLU of the Dakotas - 701/461-7290
Today, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the First Amendment Project and the ACLU of the Dakotas applauded the decision of the Brookings Arts Council to reconsider its initial rejection of Joy Crane's "Chastity Belt - Circa 2001" and put the work on display in its 25th Annual Juried Art Exhibit.
"Chastity Belt" - a beaded chastity belt bolted to what looks like a brick wall and including words and phrases like "Bush vs. Roe Wade," "Right to Life," "Abuse," "Equal Pay," "Chauvinism," "Rape" and "Genital Mutilation" - had been rejected because it was considered to be "not appropriate" for the exhibition space and potentially too controversial for Brookings, SD.
Although officials at BAC have not officially stated the reasons why they reversed their initial decision, there was pressure on the Council to re-display the work: The NCAC, the First Amendment Project and the ACLU of the Dakotas jointly authored a letter informing the Council of the constitutional issues its action raised and advocating that the work be put on display as soon as possible. The NCAC also informed local supporters of free expression as well as other South Dakota arts institutions of the incident.
Svetlana Mintcheva, Arts Advocacy Project Coordinator at NCAC, expressed her satisfaction with the Council's decision: "I am glad the Brookings Arts Council has recognized that, although some artistic expression might provoke debate and controversy in the community, such expression is valuable and should not be suppressed."
"Excluding work from a publicly funded arts institution for the sole reason that its message could be disagreeable to some people is clearly unconstitutional. We are pleased that BAC realized the implications of their exclusion of 'Chastity Belt' in time to put the work back on display," said David Greene, Executive Director of the First Amendment Project.
The National Coalition Against Censorship has offered BAC assistance in drafting a clear set of guidelines that would preclude arbitrary exclusions in the future. "We hope," said Mintcheva, "that any future guidelines will include a policy stating respect for artistic freedom. Such policies have been successfully adopted by art venues around the country.
Copyright:The information presented here by the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) may be freely redistributed in its entirety, provided that readers are informed that the information was obtained from NCAC's World Wide Web site and that credit is given to the appropriate source of whatever information is used. Permission is expressly granted for the information obtained to be made available for file transfer from installations offering unrestricted anonymous file transfer on the Internet. Information found here may not be sold for profit or incorporated in commercial documents without the written permission from the National Coalition Against Censorship.
Return to chronology 06 Aug 2001
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, August 14, 2001
HONOLULU - The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawai'i today filed a lawsuit in federal court against the City and County of Honolulu for improperly banning artist Daria Fand's art work from an "Art of Women" exhibit at Honolulu Hale in March of this year. The piece was banned because officials from the Mayor's Office of Culture and the Arts found Fand's piece, "Last of the Believers", which depicts a nude woman on a cross, to be "controversial" and "offensive."
"The City blatantly deprived Ms. Fand of her rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Hawaii State Constitution," said Brent White, legal director of the ACLU of Hawai'i.
Fand was one of several artists invited by the Honolulu County Committee on the Status of Women and the Mayor's Office on Culture and the Arts (MOCA) to submit work for the exhibit, "The Art of Women: Celebrating the Challenges and Successes of Girl and Women Artists with Disabilities". The non-juried show, held March 14-30 as part of Women's History Month, was intended to promote the work of many women artists.
The exhibit was co-sponsored by several disability rights groups.
The ACLU maintains in the lawsuit that it is a basic principle of law that the potentially controversial nature of a piece of art is never proper grounds for government censorship and that the artist's portrayal of a nude woman does not make the censorship any more acceptable. In fact, the Art of Women exhibit itself contained other paintings of nude women.
"The fact that the City banned Ms. Fand's artwork and violated her freedom of expression is symptomatic of the City's lack of proper respect for the First Amendment, which protects controversial speech," said White. "Here, the City was clearly concerned that the sight of a nude woman on a cross might offend certain conservative Christian individuals. Rather than risk offending these individuals, the City deprived Ms. Fand of her constitutional rights and all of us of the opportunity to view the works of an impressive and talented artist."
The ACLU seeks to accomplish three things with its lawsuit:
1. To vindicate the principle that refusing to display "Last of the Believers" at Honolulu Hale constituted improper censorship by the City and violated Fand's First Amendment rights.2. To prevent the City from improperly censoring art to be exhibited at Honolulu Hale in the future.
3. To require that the City compensate Ms. Fand for her lost opportunity to display her work, either financially or by displaying "Last of the Believer."
Copyright 2001, American Civil Liberties Union
Reprinted with permission of the American Civil Liberties Union
http://www.aclu.org
Return to chronology 14 Aug 2001