Excrement:
Your Tax Dollars at Work
by Wendy
McElroy
When the Brooklyn Museum of Art used taxpayer's money to
present Sensation - a show of young British
artists – Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani erupted in rage. He
didn't think the average Joe and Jane should be forced to
subsidize artwork that included dissected animals and a painting
of the Madonna smeared with elephant dung. On November 1st,
federal judge Nina Gershon ruled that Guiliani's withdrawal of
city funding violated the First Amendment. Gershon declared,
"There is no federal constitutional issue more grave than
the effort by government officials to censor works of
expression..."
The Museum is not the only one full of excrement. Refusing to
subsidize a form of expression is not censorship. If it were, I
would be guilty each time I bought The Economist instead
of Time. Using your own money to express your own
preference in literature, art and religion is precisely what the
First Amendment was intended to protect. Coercing money from
taxpayers for 'art' they would not willingly support is a violation
of freedom of speech. It means that taxpayers might not be able
to support the art they do prefer. Having mega-wealthy Museum
Board Members - like Henry Luce III – demand that working
people subsidize their choice in art as a matter of free speech
is obscene. As Guiliani stated, "It isn't about free speech.
It's actually a desecration of the First Amendment...to take
money out of the taxpayers' pockets...into the pockets of
multimillionaires."
The city corporation counsel, Michael D. Hess, had asked Judge
Gershon to postpone her ruling until the exhibit's financing
could be examined. She declined. Hess' request reflected the
revelation that - as well as sopping up tax dollars - Sensation
had been financed by individuals and corporations who stood to
profit monetarily from the exhibit. For example, Museum Director
Arnold L. Lehman solicited funds from dealers who represented the
artists on display. The Museum also received a pledge of $160,000
from British ad millionaire Charles Saatchi, from whose private
collection the pieces were culled. In an article entitled
"Brooklyn Museum Recruited Donors Who Stood to Gain,"
the October 31st New York Times reported on the Museum's
response to possible accusations of conspiring to inflate the
prices of Saatchi's collection. "They...then tried to
conceal his financial support from the public."
Even the liberal chic New York Times - a passionate
defender of the exhibit - called the Museum's funding
"highly unusual" and "ethically problematic."
Personally I have no problem with loudly calling it unethical for
one set of elitist millionaires to enrich others of their ilk at
taxpayers' expense.
And I am offended by the rationale they use to justify
bellying up to the public trough: namely, the average person is
too stupid to understand fine culture. If left to our own
devises, you and I might spend our money on tickets to a ball
game or a set of Dr. Seuss books for our children. Then what
would become of the shit-smeared canvasses on which the progress
of Western culture clearly rests?
It is time to tell elitist multi-millionaires that you refuse
to divert money from your family's budget to support their
preferences in art. Or to further plump their bank accounts. In
Washington, at the behest of Sen. Robert Smith (N.H.), the Senate
passed a non-binding resolution to end federal funding for the
Museum. Perhaps this is a good step toward making artists earn
their own way in the same manner as any other profession. I
always prefer the direct approach. Far be it from me to suggest,
however, that readers smear a file card with whatever substance
best expresses their free speech and mail it to the Director of
the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The address is 200 Eastern Parkway,
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11238.
www.american-partisan.com
