The Mapplethorpe Obscenity Trial
In 1990 a groundbreaking trial happened in Cincinnati, Ohio where perceptions of art, public funding, freedom of expression, and the definition of “obscenity” were challenged. Let’s unpack this one together.
Some Context
First I need to set the stage a little bit for you. In April 1990, the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) opened The Perfect Moment, an exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs. This travelling exhibit was especially timely because Mapplethorpe had died of complications with AIDS a few months prior to its opening, spurring increased interest in his work. The collection included 175 pieces grouped into three different ‘portfolios’. The Z portfolio was nude portraits of African American men, the Y portfolio included flower still lifes, and the X portfolio featured sexually explicit homosexual images, it also included two portraits of nude children. As you can probably imagine, the X portfolio was what caused most people to have the reaction they did.
The show originally opened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Philadelphia where it generated a few concerns but was generally well received. However, as the exhibit moved through Chicago and towards Washington D.C. controversy started to build. The American Family Association (a conservative watchdog association) started urging politicians to demand that the Corcoran’s National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) funding get eliminated if the exhibit was shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Not surprisingly they cancelled their showing of the collection and the director of the gallery resigned as a result.
Dennis Barrie, who served as the director of the CAC from 1983 to 1992, heard that the Washington show had been cancelled a few months before it was scheduled to open at his gallery. Instead of backing down and cancelling their exhibit Barrie started to work to try and get ahead of this controversy. Cincinnati was a city more conservative than average at the time, peep shows, adult bookstores, and strip clubs were all banned. However, Barrie and the CAC board were determined, they lobbied community members to generate public support for the show, reaching out to politicians and outlets. They also prepared to potentially have to legally defend the collection and retained PR professionals and lawyers with experience in arts-related controversies. Barrie said, “we really thought at one point that we had won over the city” (Palmer, 2015).
Unfortunately, Barrie and the board underestimated the campaign mounting against these more envelope-pushing works of art. The Citizens for Community Values in Cincinnati launched a “publicity and letter writing campaign against the show calling it ‘child pornoghraphy’ and sending thousands of letters demanding the exhibition be cancelled and that funding be pulled from the Fine Arts Fund (an umbrella campaign to raise funds for eight cultural organizations in the city)” (Palmer, 2015).
Barrie recognized that this was a well organized and carried out attack against their institution and the exhibit. CAC board chairman Chad P. Wick even resigned when local companies threatened to pull their business from his employer even though it had nothing to do with the exhibit or gallery.
Another piece of the controversy revolved around funding and whether federal money should be used to finance these photographs through the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Senator Jesse Helms, a North Carolina Republican led efforts to try and keep funding money from artists whose work he deemed obscene or sacrilegious. He said, “taxpayers' money should not be used to subsidize filthy and offensive art in any form. The NEA, and others who have no concern about the effect of such subsidies, insist that the taxpayers' objections should be ignored” (Wilkerson, 1990).
The Exhibition Opens in Cincinnati
On April 6th, 1990 there was a preview night for the show. It was for members only and it drew a much higher attendance rate than previous events, with over 4,000 people there and local and national press coverage. Barrie was presently surprised by how well, aside from some protesters, the event went.
But then just before noon on April 7, 1990, the day the exhibit opened to the public, a grand jury issued four criminal indictments. Two were against the museum and two were against Barrie himself, “for pandering obscenity and illegal use of a minor in nudity oriented materials” (Palmer, 2015). Seven of the images on display were deemed obscene including the two images of children and five of the sexually explicit images. At around 2:30pm that same day 20 police officers came into the museum to present the CAC officials with the indictment and kicked out all guests present in order to videotape the exhibit for evidence.
As this progressed inside, outside hundreds of demonstrators gathered both for and against the artworks. Many of the complaints, it was noted, came from people who had never even seen the photographs they were protesting against.
No arrests were made and no photographs were seized on opening day when the indictments were issued, it would be up to a jury to decide Barrie and the museum’s fate.
The Trial
If you’ll remember, the museum had hired a lawyer preemptively to get ahead of anything that might come their way when they heard about the show in Washington getting cancelled. Their lawyer was H. Lewis Sirkin, an expert in the first amendment and who was well known for his work defending adult book and video stores in the region. He had even litigated against the Citizens for Community Values before.
The biggest issue was that Sirkin had never defended a museum against criminal obscenity, no one ever had, this was something new. In his other cases for book and video stores he would bring in psychologists to argue that the sexual behavior in these books and videos is perfectly normal and that they’re not obscene but in this case he had to adopt a new strategy. He set out to argue that art doesn’t have to be pretty. It can make people uncomfortable and maybe won’t be appreciated for a long time. Sirkin said, “I wanted to show that this was a really critical time in American history. You don’t have to like it, you don’t have to come to the museum” (Palmer, 2015).
On the flip side of this argument, in the public eye, was National Review editor William F. Buckley, who wrote in the newspaper, “are we taking the position that any creation executed by an artist is ‘art’—and that it should be immune from criticism? Let us suppose that an artist painted a synagogue in the shape of a swastika. Would we be obliged to withhold criticism of the painting, in deference to the liberties of the artist?” (Palmer, 2015). He even went to see the exhibit for himself and told Barrie afterwards that there were only 13 paintings that he should be put in jail for. So Sirkin knew he was up against a tough crowd.
During an evidentiary hearing Sirkin argued that the prosecution should have to include all 175 images from the show in the materials that they presented to the jury. He said that just showing them the seven in question would be depriving them of context, like asking them to judge an entire book based on a 3 page scene. Unfortunately the prosecution won that one and the jury was actually banned from seeing any photographs other than the seven targeted by this case.
The trial began on September 24, 1990 and it took four days to just select the jury. The prosecution was aiming for people who were maybe from more rural areas, had little interest in galleries and museums, and who would be less likely to be sympathetic to the anti-censorship argument from the defense. Sirkin, for his part, worked to appeal to these juror’s senses of individual freedom.
During the trial the prosecution presented the seven photos (remember the jurors weren’t even allowed to see any other photo from the collection) in the most salacious and scandalous way possible. To combat this, Sirkin and the defense emphasized as much as possible the images’ artistic value. Luckily they were able to draw from a deep bench of expert witnesses from top institutions in the art world, all eager to come to the defense of art and explain that even art that challenges conventional values and tastes is still important to be shown.
On October 5th, 1990 both sides made their closing arguments and the jury began their deliberation.
The Result
After only two hours they were back with their verdict: not guilty on all charges. “Shouts and cheers filled the tiny courtroom and two adjacent overflowing rooms where television monitors were set up to view the proceedings. Supporters of the arts center hugged and kissed one another with the announcement of the final 'not guilty’” (Wilkerson, 1990). Just as a side note, if they had been convicted, the CAC would have faced $10,000 in fines and Barrie could have been sentenced to a year in jail and $2,000 in fines.
It seemed as though the prosecution’s strategy of only showing the jury the seven photographs in question had completely backfired. Barrie was contacted by several jurors, after the trial, who were infuriated that they weren’t allowed to see all the work during the trial.
This case has resulted in a positive legacy for the CAC and for Barrie himself who, interestingly enough, went on to defend “obscene” lyrics at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. The new director of the CAC says that they’re still trying to challenge viewers and display work that’s of the moment. While the line of obscenity has moved, most would argue, the power of Mapplethorpe’s work hasn’t changed, “these photos are still challenging. They continue to reverberate” (Palmer, 2015).
Works Cited
Palmer, Alex. “When Art Fought the Law and the Art Won”. Smithsonian Magazine. 2015. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-art-fought-law-and-art-won-180956810/
Wilkerson, Isabel. “Cincinnati Jury Acquits Museum in Mapplethorpe Obscenity Case”. The New York Times. 1990. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/06/us/cincinnati-jury-acquits-museum-in-mapplethorpe-obscenity-case.html