Drawing the Line in Brooklyn

Non-profit groups rally behind museum after Mayor withholds funds and threatens to oust board over controversial art show

Numerous non-profit groups and foundations have joined together to help the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which stands to lose all $7-million of its New York City aid in a dispute over a controversial exhibition that includes a picture of the Virgin Mary adorned with pieces of elephant dung.

The money — nearly one-third of the organization’s $23-million budget — is not all that is at stake, say the leaders of several prominent non-profit organizations. Instead, they say, the episode raises serious questions about whether charities that accept government money must steer clear of programs that could offend politicians — and whether the boards of such organizations can set policy without government interference.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has already withheld one monthly installment of city funds to the Brooklyn museum. Mr. Giuliani, a Republican, contends that it was wrong for a museum that receives city support to mount an exhibit that contains art that some people consider to be sacrilegious or otherwise offensive.

In addition to the painting of the Virgin Mary, the exhibit, called “Sensations,” includes a dead shark floating in a tank of formaldehyde and a bust carved out of an artist’s own frozen blood.

A few days before the exhibit opened on October 2, Mr. Giuliani said he planned not only to cut the city’s funds but also to terminate the museum’s lease of its city-owned building and to seize control of the board of directors — unless the museum canceled the exhibit or removed some of the works he found offensive.

Whether he can take any of those steps is now up to the courts, where the museum and the Mayor have each filed lawsuits.

The museum has filed a suit against the city in federal court, seeking to have the funds restored. The city, meanwhile, has filed its own suit in state court, charging that the museum is violating its lease by restricting access to the public through an admission fee and by requiring that children who attend the exhibition be accompanied by an adult.

Several foundations have volunteered to pay the museum’s legal costs and to finance newspaper advertisements designed to attract public support for the museum’s decision to go ahead with the exhibit. Fourteen organizations, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and People For the American Way, have also joined in a court filing to oppose the Mayor’s effort to slash the museum’s support. Other groups lending their names to the brief include the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Freedom to Read Foundation, the New-York Historical Society, Seattle Art Museum, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Mayor Giuliani’s action “threatens all institutions who receive any kind of public support,” said Victor Kovner, a lawyer who represents those groups.

The Mayor and his supporters “have every right not to like the art, and the right to encourage people not to attend, and the right to be out on the picket line,” he added. “But he doesn’t have the right to use the power of his office to punish a museum for exercise of its First Amendment rights.”

Charles Halpern, president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, which has pledged to help pay the museum’s legal costs, said the case “is not just about art, and it is not just about the First Amendment. It is about what it means to live in an open society and in a democracy, and it deserves the closest scrutiny of the philanthropic community.”

Richard L. Moyers, vice-president for programs and services at the National Center for Nonprofit Boards, said he was concerned by Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to intrude on decisions made by the museum’s trustees. “What was most alarming was Mr. Giuliani’s argument that, ‘This board is not a good board because they would let this happen — therefore, we don’t trust them with our money,’” Mr. Moyers said. It would be one thing, he noted, if board members had invested money in a Ponzi scheme, embezzled funds, or otherwise acted irresponsibly with the museum’s money. “But for a public official to say, ‘I don’t agree with the way this money is being spent’ as his basis for disagreement is a dangerous precedent that would have implications for a lot of boards,” he said.

Not all non-profit groups agree that the museum case threatens the ability of charities to undertake projects that are controversial. Leaders of several religious organizations said the museum should recognize that government support often comes with strings attached, and that the government has no obligation to finance any art programs.

Seth Leibsohn, a director of the Jewish Policy Center, in Washington, said his organization was sympathetic to the concerns that Catholic leaders had expressed about the painting of the Madonna. He said that the museum’s display of hateful art was akin to an expression of religious discrimination and that the Mayor therefore was well within his authority to eliminate the museum’s city aid.

“I don’t see it as a big threat,” he said. “I think that non-profits, by and large, are provided a wide berth.”

The Brooklyn museum’s trustees and director anticipated that the exhibit, which features contemporary works by young British artists from the collection of British advertising executive Charles Saatchi, would generate headlines and spark debate. In fact, the exhibit’s publicity brochures display a bright yellow warning sign that reads, “The contents of this exhibition may cause shock, vomiting, confusion, panic, euphoria, and anxiety.” But nobody expected to face the possibility of losing city funds.

Several foundations — including the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts — have stepped forward to help the Brooklyn Museum of Art foot its legal bills in its fight against the Mayor. Others have underwritten newspaper ads.

The Open Society Institute, the foundation created by the billionaire financier George Soros, paid for a full-page advertisement in The New York Times sponsored by the PEN America Center, a writers’ group that promotes free expression. The ad featured a letter of support for the museum signed by 106 writers, actors, and filmmakers, among them E. L. Doctorow, Steve Martin, and Kurt Vonnegut.

And a group of 20 New York foundations have been meeting to discuss what else to do.

Archibald L. Gillies, president of the Andy Warhol Foundation, said the issues at stake are “bigger than just one museum, one exhibition, one painting, one politician.”

“What it does is put a chill in the air,” Mr. Gillies asserted. “That’s Mr. Giuliani’s real goal: to chill the atmosphere and show he is in charge and threaten people, because these institutions are dependent financially.”

He said he hoped that a broad range of foundations would get involved in the opposition. Foundations that support libraries or education programs, for example, should be concerned, Mr. Gillies said, because the Mayor’s actions imply that any mayor can slash the budget of a public library because he or she finds some books to be offensive, or to cancel funds for university research about controversial subject matter.

Other non-profit leaders say the Mayor was justified in taking the actions he did.

Susan Fani, director of research at the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said her group finds some of the works on display to be offensive, most notably Chris Ofili’s 1996 painting “The Holy Virgin Mary,” which depicts a black Madonna with a clump of dung on her chest and images of female genitalia in the background.

Ms. Fani said the museum’s decision to go ahead with the exhibit shows that the institution “doesn’t understand how seriously many New Yorkers take their religious convictions.”

If the exhibit were privately supported, her group “still wouldn’t like it, but we wouldn’t have the same kind of response,” she said. “It’s a question of the way it is displayed — and that our money is going to attack our religion in this manner.”

Among the other groups protesting the exhibit have been the Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus, New York Hispanic Clergy Organization, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

In the interim, the museum is just beginning to deal with the possible need to raise additional funds while it fights its battles in court. Although the museum has a $60-million endowment, museum officials don’t want to dip into the principal because they rely on the income they earn from it.

Before they plan any new fund-raising campaigns, however, museum officials are waiting to see whether the federal court orders the city to make payments to the museum — which would make the need for short-term aid moot.

In the meantime, Peter Trippi, vice-director for development, reported that the controversy has generated an unexpected windfall: 1,000 new members have joined the museum in a 10-day period following the exhibit’s opening, a 9-per-cent jump that brings its total membership to about 12,000. In addition, he said, the new members are giving at higher levels, choosing the $150 membership level, rather than the standard $50 contribution for individuals or $75 for families. And, he added, no current supporters, either foundations or corporations, have yanked their support in light of the controversy.

Edward H. Able, president of the American Association of Museums and the past chair of the National Center for Nonprofit Boards, said the situation also highlights the fact that many non-profit groups are unprepared for a sudden financial shortfall or unexpected crisis.

“I have long advocated that non-profit organizations in general, and museums in particular, must have in place financial strategies to sustain the institution in any kind of financial crisis,” he said, be it the loss of a major source of funds or a building’s roof falling in.

“There are a number of lessons that will inform us out of the Brooklyn situation,” he said. “We really have to wait until the dust settles and we have an opportunity to assess the total event.”