A Sensation--But Is It Art?

An art exhibit featuring works such as dead animals sliced into sections and suspended in tanks of formaldehyde, and a portrait of the Virgin Mary decorated with elephant dung and pornographic cutouts, has thrown America's art capital into a cultural war over art and censorship.

New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani attacked the exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art as "sick stuff" and offensive to Catholics in particular. Charging that the museum had no right to use taxpayer dollars to display offensive art, the mayor revoked the museum's funding and filed suit to take over the museum. In return, the museum sued the city, arguing that Giuliani had infringed on its First Amendment right to exhibit the works (see Opinion, page 36).

Left out of the debate is the question of why there is dung on the Virgin in the first place. British artist Chris Ofili says he uses dung in many of his paintings as a cultural reference to his African heritage. "There's something incredibly simple and basic about it," he says. "It attracts a multiple of meanings and interpretations."

The conflict over meaning was precisely what created the furor--and drew record crowds, surpassing the museum's previous record, set for a Monet exhibition in 1997.