A museum in the dock
On opening day the police came: in 1990, a museum in Cincinnati and its Mapplethorpe photos went on trial.
On 7 April 1990, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati opened its doors to an exhibition that half the country was already arguing about. "The Perfect Moment" showed one hundred and seventy-five photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. The New York artist had died of AIDS-related causes the previous year. Alongside flower still lifes and portraits, his work also included explicit images of gay men.
On the opening day itself, the law stepped in. A grand jury had viewed the show in advance and now indicted the museum and its director Dennis Barrie, among other things for pandering obscenity. At the centre were seven pictures: five showed men in sadomasochistic poses, two showed naked children. The police sent the public and press out and closed the building for an hour to film the works as evidence. Outside, a spontaneous protest against censorship formed.
The show had a history. The Corcoran Gallery in Washington had cancelled it after the conservative senator Jesse Helms railed against public funding for "filthy" art. In Cincinnati, a city proud of its reputation in the fight against pornography, it became a criminal case. It was considered the first trial of an art museum over the content of an exhibition.
A federal judge barred the police from seizing pictures or closing the exhibition again. It became a crowd puller. The trial followed in the autumn. The defence argued that the photographs undeniably had artistic merit and were therefore not obscene in the legal sense. On 5 October 1990, four women and four men acquitted the museum and its director on all counts.
The acquittal became a milestone for artistic freedom. At the same time, the case showed how threatening visible gay sexuality seemed to many in the middle of the AIDS crisis. Mapplethorpe himself did not live to see the dispute over his pictures.