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16 - The Public Value of Controversial Art: The Case of the Sensation Exhibit

from PART FIVE - CULTURAL POLICIES

By
Arthur C. Brooks
Edited by
Michael Hutter  and
David Throsby
Arthur C. Brooks
Affiliation:
Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
Michael Hutter
Affiliation:
Witten/Herdecke University
David Throsby
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney
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Summary

All the others translate: the painter sketches

A visible world to love or reject;

Rummaging into his living, the poet fetches

The images out that hurt and connect.

W. H. Auden, “The Composer”

Introduction

There is probably no point at which the cultural value of art is brought more clearly into public view than when art creates a scandal. This is nothing new. In 1815, for example, Goya's Nude Maja (La Maja Desnuda) created a public stir that landed the artist in front of the Spanish Inquisition, where he was forced to answer charges of obscenity. The work, today considered an icon of cultural value, was deemed culturally destructive by some authorities at the time.

Similar controversies about cultural value erupt periodically to this day. Over the past 20 years, scandals have erupted on numerous occasions in the United States, in which government funds have gone to subsidize the production or exhibition of art considered by some to be obscene, blasphemous, or offensively unpatriotic. The resulting value clashes between opponents and supporters of the offending art have constituted battles in America's so-called culture wars between one group that is traditional, conservative, and religious, and the other that is permissive, liberal, and secular (Himmelfarb 1999).

There are few better examples of a battle over the cultural value of art than the infamous Sensation exhibit at New York City's Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Type
Chapter
Information
Beyond Price
Value in Culture, Economics, and the Arts
 , pp. 270 - 282
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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References

Bennett, William. 2000. The Humanities, the Universities, and Public Policy. In Bradford, Gigi, Gray, Michael, and Wallach, Glenn, eds., The Politics of Culture: Policy Perspectives for Individuals, Institutions, and Communities, 226–235. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi. 2001. The Subjunctive Mood of Art. In Rothfield, L., ed., Unsettling “Sensation”: Arts Policy Lessons from the Brooklyn Museum of Art Controversy, 93–95. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, Arthur C. 2004. In Search of True Public Arts Support. Public Budgeting & Finance 24(2): 88–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frey, Bruno S. 1997. Evaluating Cultural Property: The Economic Approach. International Journal of Cultural Property 6(2): 231–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 1999. One Nation, Two Cultures. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Lewis, Gregory B., and Arthur, C. Brooks. 2005. A Question of Morality: Artists' Values and Public Funding for the Arts. Public Administration Review 65(1): 8–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, Kevin F., Brooks, Arthur, Julia, F. Lowell, and Zakaras, Laura. 2001. The Performing Arts in a New Era. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, Kevin F., Elizabeth, H. Ondaatje, Zakaras, Laura, and Brooks, Arthur. 2004. Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate about the Benefits of the Arts. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.Google Scholar
Rothfield, Lawrence. 2001. Introduction: The Interests in “Sensation.” In Rothfield, Lawrence, ed., Unsettling “Sensation”: Arts Policy Lessons from the Brooklyn Museum of Art Controversy, 1–14. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar

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