'SENSATION' IN BROOKLYN : Art, free speech & tax money.

The controversy surrounding the "Sensation" exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum has generated a number of knee-jerk responses. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is trying to cut taxes paid to the museum and wants to evict it from the city-owned building. On the other side are those who defend the exhibit and the right of the museum to show anything it likes.

The exhibit seems calculated to offend: statues of little girls with phalluses for noses, the portrait of a child murderer made up of tiny children's handprints, dissected animals, the bust of a man made with his own blood. There was controversy as well over the fact that it is all the collection of one man, and one of the sponsors is the auction house which will represent him when these items are sold. It is now clear that the Brooklyn Museum took money from those who stood to benefit from the success of the exhibit. This is ethically shaky, in the view of many museum officials. What drew the mayor's fire was an assemblage called "The Holy Virgin Mary," by Chris Ofili, which featured elephant dung and small cut-out photos of female genitalia.

Most of our large museums receive at least some tax money, and the Brooklyn Museum controversy raises the question of tax support for the arts. Defenders of the "Sensation" exhibit protest that artists must be free to "push the envelope" (always their vocation) and argue that to pull tax money on the grounds of offensiveness is to inhibit free speech. Opponents say that the artist should indeed remain free to do whatever he or she wants, but artists can't expect people they offend to pick up the tab.

Artists have usually been a pretty craven lot, really. After all, they have to sell their wares, and can't be offensive to anyone who could be of serious help to them. During the Renaissance, artists frequently placed their patrons in pictures of the saints, the patron always looking suitably devout. In our time this sort of obsequiousness continues: Transgressive art tends to transgress in very predictable directions. It is unlikely that something offensive to Judaism or to African-Americans would be considered at all acceptable; few Nazis or KKK members haunt the galleries. Christianity is obviously considered fair game, a safe target. The Brooklyn Museum isn't alone: at New York's Guggenheim there is a series called "Stations of the Cross," consisting of people copulating. At the Whitney there is, again, Andre Serrano's "Piss Christ." A Torah or Islamic Crescent, given the same treatment, would probably offend more people than this photograph of a crucifix floating in urine. And they would have every right to be offended.

Civility and taste (if not reverence, even for beliefs you do not share) should keep curators from this sort of thing. Outrage is an understandable response, and there is not only a right, but even sometimes a duty, to protest against offensive art. We also have to argue against the idea that no art could be too offensive for public display; nor are we obliged to take the pretensions of every artist seriously.

Defenders of the exhibit point out that the impressionists and Stravinsky once outraged an uncomprehending public. It doesn't follow, though, that anything outrageous is art, or that in order not to appear Philistine we should tolerate absolutely anything. If nothing is to be taken so seriously that its violation could cause outrage, nihilism wins.

The taste of curators is one thing. Tax money for the arts is another. If taste can't prevent exhibits like this, you would think a desire for self-preservation would. Even if Mayor Giuliani loses in the courts, the Brooklyn Museum is likely to receive less money next year than in the past, precisely because of this.

I have a hard time making the argument that any tax money should be spent on the arts, in a society where so many people lack basic medical coverage. There are priorities, and healthy children matter more than lavish museums. At the same time, I love to visit galleries and go to museums as often as I can. Though there is healthy private support for many of our greatest museums, this is economically a boom time, and that support may erode. My problem with the mayor's action (which was also opposed by the head of the New York City Council, Peter Vallone, who is a serious Catholic) is that it could cut in other directions.

Not too long ago the Metropolitan Museum of Art-my favorite-was host to a glorious exhibit of Byzantine art, almost all of it religious. Beautiful icons, chalices, tapestries, mosaics, ivories, and illuminated manuscripts all offered a wonderful picture of Orthodox Christianity. What if an atheist were to object to her tax money being used for this, and brought the matter to court? Some tax money no doubt went, indirectly, to monasteries, which lent much of the art exhibited at the Metropolitan. The whole exhibit served as a kind of celebration of Christian belief, although that was not its main reason for being, in the minds of the curators; it was beautiful by any standard. However, if we are talking about the power to offend, this definitely had the power to offend an atheist, and the city would have been poorer if someone offended by "The Treasures of Byzantium" had been able to keep it from being shown.

My argument here is not that the city would be poorer without "Sensation," which-thanks to the mayor-has drawn huge crowds. Rather, it is this: In a democracy, if we accept taxation at all, we also accept the fact that some of our money will be spent on things we don't like. I don't like my tax money used for the pork Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott have doled out to their districts, or for new weapons systems. We accept a certain amount of slop in a democracy, and at the same time have the right and sometimes the duty to protest how our taxes are being used. If the people who run the Brooklyn Museum and other museums have so little sensitivity and taste, and if their public-or a good portion of it-is similarly afflicted, the problem is a cultural and spiritual one that goes deep and won't be solved by the withholding of taxes. And in the meantime, we should remember that the tax knife could cut in other directions as well. If we refuse to allow public funding for anything that might offend anyone, we could wind up with fearful, bland museums afraid to show not only Ofili's "The Holy Virgin Mary," but also the most reverent icon of the Mother of God from the Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai.

Having said that, if I were a private contributor to the Brooklyn Museum, I might consider withdrawing my support. The use of withheld tax money as a punishment makes for a dangerous precedent. Voting with your own check-book makes sense.