A Brouhaha Grows in Brooklyn

Lately, the Brooklyn Museum of Art has been in the news. Before this explosion of publicity, how many people even knew about the Brooklyn Museum of Art? To tell the truth, although I visited there when I lived in Manhattan, I had not looked it up on the Internet until this recent reminder of its existence. Now, the exhibit of the Saatchi Collection from Great Britain has become a major attraction/repulsion, and the crowds are lining up to pay their admission fees to get in and see this exhibition called "Sensation".

From what I can see on my tiny computer monitor, I feel ho-hum about it, since it seems to be put together specifically to make people uncomfortable or disgusted. When the Dadists did this, most of their work was funny to me, or strange. But this seems to be an exhibit that wants its audience to become upset in a negative way. I agree that art can or even should be shocking, should make people think and come away with an expanded vision and experience. So many parts of a show can do this. Sometimes it is just the announcement of the show that is done in a very thought-provoking way. Or knock your-socks-off design in the works presented. Or colors that are unbelievable. Or the post-mortem retrospective of a favorite painter that you didn't know had died.

But this exhibit?

Would I stand in line for hours to get in, and then be carried along in the river of humanity through the exhibit halls? Would I pay to see this? Would I want the exhibition catalog on my bookshelves? Would I find more of benefit in it than of detriment?

I don't know... Take a look like I have. Would you be happy to have gone to this show?

On the other side of the coin: does Mayor Giuliani have any right to censor this show and deny promised (and probably already-spent) funding to one of New York City's best-known public museums? Does he have the right to impose his moral standards on anyone else? And did the director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art get his wish of more publicity and more interest?

Did this show prop up sagging museum attendance?

It seems that everyone wins .. perhaps with the exception of the viewing public. The "unknown" artist who used elephant dung, for whatever reason, has had at least a flash in the fickle pan of international art fame.

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