Art fiasco reveals a changing New York

To stop the exhibit, which is scheduled to open tomorrow and run through Jan. 9, Giuliani has said he will cut off $7 million in city funding to the museum - almost one-third of its annual budget - and to try to evict it from its city-owned building.

The museum has responded by filing a lawsuit, charging the mayor with violating the First Amendment right to free speech by withholding funds.

"The law is that once the government makes a decision to fund free expression, then it can't pick and choose based on the content," says Councilman Ken Fisher (D) of the 33rd District in Brooklyn. "I grew up three blocks from the museum, and that was the first place I was exposed to culture and art, and same will be true for my kids. That's why I think the mayor is misguided in his approach to this."

Public funding for the arts has long been a target of conservative Republicans. The Republican-led Congress attempted to cut most of the funding for the National Endowment of the Arts in 1994, and earlier this week, the US Senate passed a nonbinding resolution saying federal funds for the Brooklyn museum should be withheld unless the exhibit is canceled.

Indeed, many observers see Giuliani's fervor in trying to shut down the exhibit as an attempt to bolster his expected run for the Senate.

"He's always vulnerable to the conservative wing of the party," says Nick Mills, professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y. "This is certainly a way to improve his credentials with them."

Giuliani supports a woman's right to abortion, and has supported gay rights in the past - both anathema to conservatives.

Though it would be no surprise that the attack on the Brooklyn exhibit would play well in the Republican-dominated upstate New York, it is also somewhat popular in New York City now, especially with its strong Catholic constituency.

"I think on all grounds, Giuliani has a winning political issue," Professor Mills says. "I don't see an upside for the defenders of [the art exhibit] - First Amendment decencies say that one ought to, but I don't think that plays particularly well in any kind of electoral battle."

Repugnance vs. expression

Is unabashed civil libertarianism - even in New York City - falling prey to a politics of repugnance, where personal revulsion is stressed over freedom of expression?

For her part, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Giuliani's expected opponent in the race for one of New York's US Senate seats, has tread cautiously.

"I share the feeling that I know many New Yorkers have that there are parts of this exhibition that would be deeply offensive," she says. "I would not go see this exhibition."

But she continues, "Our feelings of being offended should not lead to the penalizing and shutting down of an entire museum."

(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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