Contraversals of Art

I chose “Sensation” which was an exhibition from the Saatchi Collection from London. In 1999, the exhibit was in Brooklyn, NY at the Museum of Art. Here are three links that show what type of exhibits that were in this collection: “This Little Piggy Went to Town, This Little Piggy Stayed Home” http://www.damienhirst.com/exhibitions/group/1997/sensation, “A Thousand Years” http://www.damienhirst.com/a-thousand-years, “Self” http://www.saatchigallery.com/aipe/marc_quinn.htm

The city was going to revoke the museum’s lease and all of their funding if they did not take the exhibit out of the museum. This all came about because the mayor of New York at that time, Rudolph Giuliani, thought the exhibit was disgusting. He disapproved of that children could see the exhibition with their parents. Hillary Clinton stated “That it is not appropriate to penalize and punish the museum since it had served the community with distinction over many years.” The City of New York went ahead and filed an independent lawsuit to evict the museum from the building because of violating the contract with what type of shows they were supposed to put on. By contract they were supposed to have exhibits that were open to the public, to show younger people artistic things, and they were supposed to have appropriate shows for the citizens of the city. So the city cut off aid to the museum. The museum felt their freedom of expression in America was being violated. The controversy was focused on one picture in particular, “The Holy Virgin Mary.” The mayor felt that a picture of the Virgin Mary with small vaginas and it was covered with elephant dung was inappropriate to use the taxpayer’s money to display this art. He felt that this piece of art was derogated to someone’s religion.

These pictures may not be what everybody would want to see, but they deserve to be displayed just as much as any of the other art works. A lot of times pictures