June 17, 1999 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A federal judge has temporarily ordered New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the city government to continue providing city support to the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Last month, Mr. Giuliani stopped the city’s regular monthly payment to the museum because he objected to a controversial art exhibit, called “Sensation,” that included a painting of the Virgin Mary adorned with pieces of elephant dung (The Chronicle, October 21). The Mayor also threatened to throw the museum out of its city-owned building and seize control of its Board of Directors unless it canceled the exhibit.
The museum took the Mayor to court, arguing that its free-speech rights had been unfairly limited by the cut-off of city funds.
In ruling that the city funds should flow to the museum while the court was considering that question, U.S. District Court Judge Nina Gershon noted that the museum had proved that it had suffered “irreparable harm” from Mr. Giuliani’s action’s. She added that the museum had demonstrated “a likelihood of success on its First Amendment claim.”
“The issue is not whether the City could have been required to provide funding for the Sensation Exhibit, but whether the Museum, having been allocated a general operating subsidy, can now be penalized with the loss of that subsidy, and ejectment from a City-owned building, because of the perceived viewpoint of the works in the Exhibit,” Judge Gershon wrote. “The answer to that question is no.’’
She ordered the city not to take any punitive action against the museum while the court was considering the bigger issues raised in the lawsuit, including “denying, delaying, or otherwise discriminatorily treating pending or future funding requests of any type as a result of the Exhibit.”
A copy of the decision is available on-line at http://www.nyed.uscourts.gov
