A Shock Grows In Brooklyn

1933Diego Rivera outraged his patron, John D. Rockefeller Jr., by tucking a portrait of Lenin into his giant mural in the new Rockefeller Center. The mural was destroyed.

1937The Nazis called modern art Jewish and Bolshevik. They staged shows of "degenerate art" with work by artists, such as Chagall, next to pictures by the insane.

1966Edward Kienholz's assemblage of lovers in "Back Seat Dodge '38," was called obscene by the board of the Los Angeles County Museum. The show went on--with the car's doors closed.

1981Richard Serra made "Tilted Arc," a 120-foot rusted-steel wall outside a New York federal building. Politicians organized protests, and the commissioned work was removed.

1989-90Congressmen attacked the NEA-funded tour of homoerotic photos by Robert Mapplethorpe.Washington's Corcoran Gallery canceled the show. Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center didn't. Its director was tried--and acquitted--of obscenity. Showtime is making a television movie about it.

1990Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" depicted variations on the form of female genitalia. When the artist donated it to the University of D.C., Congress cut $1.6 million from the university's funding.

Maggie Malone, Ray Sawhill and Gregory Beals

© 1999