Depiction of ant-covered Jesus sparks controversy at Brooklyn Museum

posted at 3:27 pm on November 17, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Media ]   

An art exhibit that raised hackles when it appeared at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in 2010 is creating outrage all over again at New York’s prestigious Brooklyn Museum, where it scheduled to open tomorrow, November 18, and run through February 12. One of the works in the exhibit—a video depiction of ants crawling over the body of a stylized Jesus—is a particular flash point in a show that also focuses heavily on “homoerotic” art (read: lots of same-sex genitalia in close proximity).

The Brooklyn Museum is no stranger to controversy. It generated a firestorm in 1999, when its “Sensation” exhibit showcased English artist Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary. The painting, which had a little something for everyone, depicted a black Madonna surrounded by images from “blaxploitation” movies and close-ups of female genitalia cut from porn magazines. For good measure, one of the media used in the work was elephant dung. The artist’s and museum’s First Amendment rights were challenged in a lawsuit brought by then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the City of New York.

But why reminisce about art past when art future beckons? Another of the pieces in the new exhibit titled Felix, June 5, 1994 is a painting of a man made a few hours after his death from AIDS.

Not all of the works featured (there are 105 in all) are so “challenging”—to borrow the characterization of Tricia Laughlin Bloom, the project’s curator. Some are by prominent twentieth-century artists including George Bellows, Marsden Hartley, Alice Neel, and Berenice Abbott.

A helpful advisory on the Brooklyn Museum’s website page for the exhibit notes:

Some pieces in this exhibition are directed toward adult audiences. Parents and teachers are advised to preview the exhibition.

But that warning raises a trenchant question. As the ghost writer of some half dozen books on fine art, I would maintain that any true work of art, no matter how disquieting the subject, is fair game for virtually any viewer, provided the work is placed in an appropriate historical or aesthetic context. I would ask the curator behind the upcoming exhibit what precisely it is about selected pieces in the show that makes them inappropriate for “non-adult” audiences. It would be interesting to determine whether those distinctions are the same ones that segregate real art from crass visual exploitation.

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