[firewalk]

Mr. Giuliani set himself up as an arts arbiter by threatening to cut funding for a local museum because of a painting he labeled antireligious.

That was the Virgin Mary with dung thrown on for good measure wasn't it?

[areafiftyone]

- Rudy fought against public money for an art display that defiled Christ and he fought against other obscene so-called works of art.
Daily Nebraskan

New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani recently cut city funding to a city museum because of an offensive exhibit. Giuliani withheld $7 million in funds from the Brooklyn Museum of Art because of a painting that featured a black Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung and pornographic cutouts. The museum would not receive its money unless the exhibit was pulled.

The painting, entitled "Holy Virgin Mary," is just the highlight of the museum's risqu� new exhibit. Among the other displays in the appropriately-titled "Sensation" were bisected pigs and cows preserved in formaldehyde and castrated male dummies.

Giuliani withheld the museum's annual subsidy - about one-third its yearly income - on the grounds that it could not charge admission in a city-owned building. The U.S. Senate followed suit and pulled $500,000 of federal funds from the museum. The Senate could keep its money because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that government could hold a "decency standard" in funding the arts.

[OldFriend]

Yes, the taxpayer funded Brooklyn Museum had an exhibit of a picture of Madonna covered with elephant dung.

Rudy objected to the taxpayer funding such so called art.

No different than the garbage exhibited by Mapplethorpe.