components so as to diminish immediate identifiability, the sculp-
tures still retain a haunting connection to the overall theme. These
works refer to a historical act that evokes a collective memory of op-
pression, but they also speak to the continuing struggle for civil
rights and an end to racism. While growing up in Los Angeles, Ed-wards experienced racial conflict firsthand. Among the metal objects
incorporated into his Lynch Fragments sculptures are items he found
in the streets in the aftermath of the Watts riots in 1965. The inclu-
sion of these found objects imbued his disquieting, haunting works
with an even greater intensity.996 Chapter 36 EUROPE AND AMERICA AFTER 1945A
lthough art can be beautiful and uplifting, throughout his-
tory art has also challenged and offended. Since the early
1980s, a number of heated controversies about art have surfaced in
the United States. There have been many calls to remove the “offen-
sive” works from public view (see “Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc,” page
1016) and, in reaction, accusations of censorship. The central ques-
tions in all cases have been whether there are limits to what art can
appropriately be exhibited, and whether governmental authorities
have the right to monitor and pass judgment on creative endeavors.
A related question is whether the acceptability of a work should be a
criterion in determining the public funding of art.
Two exhibits in 1989 placed the National Endowment for the Arts
(NEA), a government agency charged with distributing federal funds
to support the arts, squarely in the middle of this debate. One of the
exhibitions, devoted to recipients of the Awards for the Visual Arts
(AVA), took place at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in
North Carolina. Among the award winners was Andres Serrano,
whose Piss Christ,a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine,
sparked an uproar. Responding to this artwork, Reverend Donald
Wildmon, an evangelical minister from Mississippi and head of the
American Family Association, expressed outrage that such work was
in an exhibition funded by the NEA and the Equitable Life Assurance
Society (a sponsor of the AVA). He demanded that the work be re-
moved and launched a letter-writing campaign that led Equitable Life
to cancel its sponsorship of the awards. To Wildmon and other
staunch conservatives, this exhibition, along with the Robert Map-
plethorpe: The Perfect Moment show, served as evidence of cultural de-
pravity and immorality, which they insisted should not be funded by
government agencies such as the NEA. Mapplethorpe was a photogra-
pher well known for his elegant, spare photographs of flowers and
vegetables as well as his erotic, homosexually oriented images. As a re-
sult of media furor over The Perfect Moment,the director of the Cor-
coran Museum of Art canceled the scheduled exhibition of this travel-
ing show. But the director of the Contemporary Arts Center in
Cincinnati decided to mount the show. The government indicted him
on charges of obscenity, but a jury acquitted him six months later.
These controversies intensified public criticism of the NEA and
its funding practices. The next year, the head of the NEA, John
Frohnmayer, vetoed grants for four lesbian, gay, or feminist perfor-
mance artists—Karen Finley, John Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Tim
Miller—who became known as the “NEA Four.” Infuriated by what
they perceived as overt censorship, the artists filed suit, eventually
settling the case and winning reinstatement of their grants. Congress
responded by dramatically reducing the NEA’s budget, and the
agency no longer awards grants or fellowships to individual artists.
Controversies have also erupted on the municipal level. In 1999,
Rudolph Giuliani, then mayor of New York, joined a number of in-
dividuals and groups protesting the inclusion of several artworks in
the exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collec-tionat the Brooklyn Museum. Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary
(FIG. 36-44), a collage of Mary incorporating cutouts from porno-
graphic magazines and shellacked clumps of elephant dung, became
the flashpoint for public furor. Denouncing the show as “sick stuff,”
the mayor threatened to cut off all city subsidies to the museum.
Art that seeks to unsettle and challenge is critical to the cultural,
political, and psychological life of a society. The regularity with which
such art raises controversy suggests that it operates at the intersection
of two competing principles: free speech and artistic expression on the
one hand and a reluctance to impose images upon an audience that
finds them repugnant or offensive on the other. What these controver-
sies do demonstrate, beyond doubt, is the enduring power of art.Public Funding of Controversial Art
ART AND SOCIETY36-44Chris Ofili,The Holy Virgin Mary,1996. Paper collage, oil
paint, glitter, polyester resin, map pins, elephant dung on linen, 7 11
5 11165 ––. Saatchi Collection, London.
Ofili, a British-born Catholic of Nigerian descent, represented the Virgin
Mary with African elephant dung on one breast and surrounded by
genitalia and buttocks. The painting produced a public outcry.1 ft.36-44A
MAPPLETHORPE,
Self-Portrait,
1980.