Today, a prominent group of national arts and free speech organizations called on New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to abandon his recently proposed plan to establish "decency standards" for city-funded museums.

Yesterday at a City Hall news conference, Mayor Giuliani unveiled a proposal to set up a "decency committee" to monitor the content of works of art displayed in New York museums receiving public funds. The proposal is in response to a photography exhibition featuring the work of African-American artists currently showing at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Renee Cox, whose work the mayor has singled out, is a photographer who uses the camera to challenge conventional images of motherhood, black femininity and masculinity. Her staged photographs serve as a reminder of the role religion plays in forming these images, and, by extension, in determining social roles. The photograph that the mayor regards as "anti-Catholic" borrows the composition of "The Last Supper" from Christian iconography, but inserts a nude black woman (Cox herself) in the position conventionally occupied by Christ.

Just last year, Giuliani lost a case filed by the Brooklyn Museum in response to the Mayor's attempt to evict the museum and effectively shut it down. Then, as now, noted Svetlana Mintcheva, Arts Advocacy Coordinator at the National Coalition Against Censorship, "the artwork looked at Christian symbols through eyes whose vision was different from established Western orthodoxies. However, the mayor finds any ideas about Christianity that differ from his particular set of Catholic views indecent and too outrageous to appear in a public space. If the mayor's plan is eventually adopted, New York City's museums will essentially be permitted to display only those works of art that suit Giuliani's tastes."

The groups involved in today's press statement believe that for the Mayor to judge the content of art in New York museums and suppress all that challenges a particular set of religious beliefs is unacceptable. David Greene, Executive Director of the First Amendment Project, expressed his concern over the constitutionality of the Mayor's plan by stating that, "a decency committee sounds an awful lot like a censorship board. And public funding is no excuse for the government to impose one set of views and silence others."

Giuliani's reliance on the precedent set by the 1998 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Finley v. the NEA is as misplaced now as it was last year in the Brooklyn Museum case. In the Finley decision, the Supreme Court affirmed general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public as one criterion (among many) that grant-giving bodies should take into consideration. Referring to Finley, Marjorie Heins, Director of the Free Expression Policy Project, noted, "there would be serious constitutional problems if the decency standard was used to discriminate against works of art based on their religious or political viewpoint." In fact, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, the decency standard was constitutional largely because it did not preclude or punish the expression of disfavored viewpoints.

Larry Siems, Director of the Freedom-to-Write and International Programs at the PEN American Center, expressed similar concerns saying that, "the whole purpose of the right to free speech is to protect controversial speech, even art that the Mayor might find personally offensive". Added Ted Berger, Executive Director of the New York Foundation for the Arts: "the truly offensive act here is the Mayor's plan. It's insulting not only to art-loving citizens of this city but to all New Yorkers who are proud of our city's reputation as one of the premier centers of artistic expression in the world."

For More Information Contact:

Svetlana Mintcheva, Arts Advocacy Coordinator
National Coalition Against Censorship - (212) 807 6222 x 23

Ted Berger
New York Foundation for the Arts - (212) 366-6900

Norma Munn
New York City Arts Coalition - (212) 246 3788

Marjorie Heins, Free Expression Policy Project - (212) 807 6222 x 12

David Greene, First Amendment Project, Oakland, CA - (510) 208 7743

Larry Siems, Freedom-to-Write and International Programs
PEN American Center - (212) 334 1660