Shortly after celebrating the birthday of The Bobo in 1999, Patrick McCaughey, Director of the Yale Center for British Art at Yale University, New Haven, CT, arranged a staff outing to the Brooklyn Museum to view 'Sensation.' The trip was a smashing success; the exhibition - BRILLIANT!
New York
The exhibition was shown in New York City at the Brooklyn Museum from 2 October 1999 to 9 January 2000. The New York show was met with instant protest, centering on The Holy Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili, which had not provoked this reaction in London. While the press reported that the piece was smeared[citation needed] with elephant dung, Ofili's work in fact showed a carefully rendered black Madonna decorated with a resin-covered lump of elephant dung. The figure is also surrounded by small collaged images of female genitalia from pornographic magazines; these seemed from a distance to be the traditional cherubim.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who had seen the work in the catalogue but not in the show, called it "sick stuff" and threatened to withdraw the annual $7 million City Hall grant from the Brooklyn Museum hosting the show, because "You don't have a right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else's religion."[7] Cardinal John O'Connor, the Archbishop of New York, said, "one must ask if it is an attack on religion itself," and the president of America's biggest group of Orthodox Jews, Mandell Ganchrow, called it "deeply offensive".[10] William A. Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said the work "induces revulsion".[7] Giuliani started a lawsuit to evict the museum, and Arnold Lehman, the museum director, filed a federal lawsuit against Giuliani for a breach of the First Amendment.[10]
Hillary Clinton spoke up for the museum, as did the New York Civil Liberties Union.[11] The editorial board of The New York Times said, Giuliani's stance "promises to begin a new Ice Age in New York's cultural affairs." [12] The paper also carried a full-page advertisement in support signed by over 100 actors, writers and artists, including Susan Sarandon, Steve Martin, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Kurt Vonnegut and Susan Sontag.[10] Ofili, who is Roman Catholic, said, "elephant dung in itself is quite a beautiful object."[10]
The United States House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution to end federal funding for the museum on 3 October 1999, and New York City did stop funding to the Brooklyn Museum. On 1 November, federal judge Nina Gershon ordered the City not only to restore the funding that was denied to the Museum, but also to refrain from continuing its ejectment action. On 16 December 1999, a 72-year-old man was arrested for criminal mischief after smearing the Ofili painting with white paint, which was soon removed.[13] The museum produced a yellow stamp, saying the artworks on show "may cause shock, vomiting, confusion, panic, euphoria and anxiety."[10] and Ofili's painting was shown behind a Plexiglass screen, guarded by a museum attendant and an armed police officer.[12] Jeffrey Hogrefe, art critic for the New York Observer, commented about the museum, "They wanted to get some publicity and they got it. I think it was pretty calculated."[7] The editor-in-chief of the New York Art & Auction magazine, Bruce Wolmer,said: "When the row eventually fades the only smile will be on the face of Charles Saatchi, a master self-promoter."[10]
HISTORY OF THE EXHIBITION
Sensation (art exhibition)
Sensation was an exhibition of the collection of contemporary art owned by Charles Saatchi, including many works by Young British Artists, which first took place 18 September – 28 December 1997 at the Royal Academy of Art in London and later toured to Berlin and New York. A proposed showing at the National Gallery of Australia was cancelled when the gallery's director decided the exhibition was "too close to the market."
The show generated controversy in London and New York due to the inclusion of images of Myra Hindley and the Virgin Mary. The show consisted of work from the collection of Charles Saatchi. It was criticized by New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and others for attempting to boost the value of the work by showing it in institutions and public museums.[1]