-Caveat Lector-
NYC Ordered To Restore Art Funding
By TOM HAYS Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- A federal judge ordered the city today to
restore millions of dollars to the Brooklyn Museum of Art that
was cut off in a dispute over a controversial art exhibit.
U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon, in a 40-page opinion filed this
morning in Brooklyn federal court, granted the museum's request
for a preliminary injunction against the city. She concluded that
the museum ``has established irreparable harm and a likelihood of
success on its First Amendment claim.''
Gershon's order bars Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and city officials
from ``taking steps to inflict any punishment, retaliation,
discrimination or sanction'' against the museum for the exhibit
that opened last month, called ``Sensation.''
City officials said they would appeal.
``The judge is totally out of control,'' Giuliani said during an
upstate New York outing. He accused Gershon of ``abandoning all
reason under the guise of the First Amendment.''
An attorney for the museum, Floyd Abrams, called Gershon's
decision ``a victory not only for the Brooklyn Museum but for the
First Amendment rights for all of us.''
The museum sued the city last month, claiming its First Amendment
rights had been violated by Giuliani's decision to freeze a $7.2
million subsidy -- about a third of its annual budget. It sought
the injunction to restore funds until the legal dispute could be
settled.
The art war broke out at a Sept. 22 news conference, when the
mayor called the exhibit of works by young British artists --
which features a portrait of the Virgin Mary adorned with
elephant dung -- ``sick,'' sacrilegious and unworthy of taxpayer
support.
After the museum refused to cancel the show, the city withheld a
$497,554 payment for October, then sued in state court to evict
the museum from a city-owned site it has leased for more than 100
years.
At a hearing before Gershon, Abrams accused the city of trying to
punish free speech and called the city's behavior ``a First
Amendment catastrophe.''
City attorneys countered that the Constitution has nothing to do
with it. They argued the museum broke its contract with the city,
thereby creating grounds for eviction. Its lease requires the
museum -- which contains the second largest art collection in the
country -- to educate schoolchildren and the general public.
Museum supporters have accused Giuliani -- the likely Republican
nominee for U.S. Senate next year -- of pandering to conservative
voters. City officials allege the museum board of directors,
British collector Charles Saatchi and sponsor, Christie's auction
house, of trying to cash in on work by modern artists whose sole
aim is to shock.
Aside from the portrait of the Virgin Mary decorated with
elephant dung, the show includes mannequins with genitals as
facial features, a glass tank featuring a fake cow's head and
20,000 live maggots and farm animals bisected and displayed in
formaldehyde.
The exhibit has drawn large crowds.
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Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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