Prosecutors Let Mapplethorpe Show Open in Cincinnati

CINCINNATI —  A preview exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe’s sexually explicit photographs opened Friday night, just hours after a judge’s ruling gave prosecutors a free hand to act against the show.

The photos, once denounced by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N. C.) and the target of a large local protest, drew an overflow crowd for a preview open only to members of the Contemporary Arts Center. It is to be opened to the public today.

An hour after the show opened, a museum attendant estimated that 1,000 people had already seen the photos, and a block-long line formed outside. There was no protest at the preview, although several hundred demonstrators showed up earlier Friday for a court hearing.

At the hearing, Hamilton County Municipal Judge Edward Donnellon dismissed a lawsuit by the arts center seeking a ruling on whether the show was obscene. The suit was seen as an attempt to preempt any effort by local authorities to close the show. Donnellon dismissed it for lack of legal standing.

After the ruling, prosecutors refused to say whether they would press obscenity charges.

“We can do a lot of things. I’m not going to tell you what we’re going to do,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Arthur Ney Jr. said. “I can’t discuss anything that I may, could, should or might do.”

Arts center lawyer Marc Mezibov said that the exhibit will be opened to the public as scheduled.

“The show will go on,” Mezibov said. “I would assume, as public officials, if they intend to bring criminal charges they would have brought that to the attention of the court.”

However, another lawyer representing the arts center said he feared authorities will move against the exhibit.

“In this county, you always live with a certain degree of fear,” said the lawyer, H. Louis Sirkin.

Hamilton County is a hub for anti-pornography activities. A citizens’ group has dubbed nine of Mapplethorpe’s works obscene and demanded that they be banned from the 175-photograph exhibit.

Last month, Sheriff Simon Leis Jr. declared that the photographs were criminally obscene. That was one reason the art center went to court, expecting charges.

In June, the Mapplethorpe exhibit was canceled at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The exhibit of the work by Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in March, 1989, prompted Congress to limit funding to the arts after Helms declared the photographs obscene.