Word: giuliani
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Outraged by one work in the exhibition, Chris Ofili's black madonna festooned with elephant dung, Rudolph Giuliani, New York City mayor and all-but-declared U.S. Senate candidate, refused to pay the October installment of the city's $7 million subsidy to the museum. The city further claimed that the institution, in league with Christie's auction house, a sponsor of the show and the seller of $2.6 million of Saatchi's art last year, was knowingly trying to raise the value of Saatchi's collection. It then filed suit to throw the museum--one of the finest...
Including the mayor, though he did have a look at the exhibition's catalog. It can't convey all the nuances Ofili intends with excrement, though Giuliani might be mollified if he knew that the artist affixes clumps of dung to just about everything, including Absolut vodka bottles and images of James Brown. It can be hard to take this sort of art seriously--it seems designed only to shock, after all--but it is easy to demonize. For his part, Ofili wasn't talking; his London gallery issued a statement saying that as a Roman Catholic, he wanted...
...Giuliani, who is likely to run for Senate against Hillary Rodham Clinton, saw an opportunity. "He knows many people are uncomfortable with taxpayers subsidizing upper-middle-class decadence," says Fred Siegel, professor of U.S. history at New York City's Cooper Union. To subject this move by Giuliani to crass political analysis is to see brilliance; he won't win the artsy crowd anyway. Upstate voters, as well as the Roman Catholics across the state who often form a bloc of swing voters, will see him as protecting basic values. And Clinton must defend the art or keep quiet. Wisely...
...would Giuliani really harm an important cultural institution that serves an otherwise art-starved neighborhood? Sure. By week's end, staff members were uttering his favorite words: "No negotiation." It's unclear, however, whether the mayor actually has the legal authority to refuse a check to an entity promised one in the budget he signed. The case will doubtless end up in court. There are constitutional issues too: the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot penalize artists solely because their work is disagreeable...
...silver lining for the artists and the museum will be the crowds that turn out to see what the fuss is about. "If I were the museum," says Mitchell Moss, a New York University urban expert whose family has a membership in the Brooklyn Museum, "I would send Giuliani a thank-you note...