Art World: Giuliani's Decency Commission

NEW YORK, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- So what happened to Rudolph W. Giuliani's controversial Decency Commission, set up to police art exhibited at museums funded by New York City, now that he is no longer mayor?

It has died without even a whimper, allowed to fade away by Giuliani's successor, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who sits on the board of a number of museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"I am opposed to government censorship of any kind," Bloomberg said recently when questioned about the commission's future in his administration. "I don't think government should be in the business of telling museums what is art or what they should exhibit."

Bloomberg added that the best rule to follow in dealing with a museum exhibition that might be considered sacrilegious or pornographic is to stay at home.

"If you don't like a museum exhibit, don't go see it," he said. "And that's going to be my strategy."

Giuliani's commission did draw up a draft report of sorts but it is not known whether it was ever submitted to him for approval. A spokesman for Giuliani said that six days before he left office Dec. 31 an e-mail was sent to Commission Chairman Leonard Garment saying the mayor would not have time to focus on the report and referred to the possibility of it being published "next year."

It's a safe bet that it will not be published if Bloomberg has anything to say about it.

Garment, a prominent attorney who had helped write a congressional report on decency in the arts in 1990, has just released the gist of the report.

It says government censorship of the arts is impractical because the U.S. Supreme Court "has made it clear that content-based standards for government-funded culture will not pass constitutional muster if those standards discriminate among works and activities based solely on concepts such as decency or offensiveness."

It goes on to say, however, that cultural institutions and the city should take into consideration "the general standards of decency, civility, and respect for the diverse belief and values of New Yorkers" and that the city should review regularly whether institutions are doing this.

And it specifically chides the Brooklyn Museum for "compromising its independence" through excessive collaboration with commercial interests in mounting its "Sensation" exhibit in 1999.

"Sensation" was the show that touched of Giuliani's wrath when Roman Catholic authorities informed him that it included a painting of the Virgin Mary clotted with elephant dung, a respected symbol of fertility in the artist's native Africa. The painting and all other art in the show were loaned by a British advertising tycoon who also underwrote the show, which he knew was bound to increase the value of his collection in the art market.

Giuliani, himself a Catholic, ordered the city's subsidy of the Brooklyn Museum withdrawn but this was overruled in court. The frustrated mayor then set up a citizens' watchdog commission and ordered it to draw up new rules for city subsidy of museums and other cultural institutions, especially in regard to matters of "decency."

The Garment report with its vague guidelines and lack of "new rules" was welcomed by the Brooklyn Museum, whose attorney, Floyd Abrams, described it as "a tribute to the First Amendment." Abrams said the museum would have been deeply concerned if the report had opened the door even a crack to government participation in deciding on what art can or can't be exhibited.

It is hoped the issue is a dead one, at least for the next four years of Bloomberg rule. It is ludicrous that a city that has a proud history of welcoming and nourishing all artistic viewpoints, no matter how offensive to some, should go through this controversy even one more time.

New York is the art capital of the world and has been since World War II drove so many "degenerate" artists out of Europe to find a new home in Manhattan.

Let's not do anything to chip away at the freedom artists feel in the United States to exhibit any kind of art they wish to create. As Bloomberg has said, dissenters can always stay home.