Brooklyn museum photograph depicting Jesus as naked woman angers mayor

By The Associated Press

02.16.01

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Photographer Renee Cox talks to news media in front of her five-panel work, "Yo Mama's Last Supper," at Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York yesterday. Cox posed nude in one of the panels for her Last Supper image.

NEW YORK — A photography exhibit that includes a work depicting Jesus as a naked woman is stirring debate at the same museum where a dung-decorated painting of the Virgin Mary sparked a heated six-month legal battle.

The work, "Yo Mama's Last Supper," features the photographer, Renee Cox; nude and surrounded by 12 black apostles. It is part of an exhibit of 94 contemporary black photographers opening today at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Cox, a Jamaican-born artist who was raised Catholic, said the Last Supper image highlights legitimate criticisms of the church, including its refusal to ordain women as priests.

"Get over it!" she said. "Why can't a woman be Christ? We are the givers of life!"

Another artist's photo collage depicts a topless woman, crucified.

"I think what they did is disgusting, it's outrageous," Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, adding that anti-Catholicism "is accepted in our city and in our society."

Giuliani said yesterday he was appointing a task force "that can set decency standards for those institutions that are using your money, the taxpayers' money," including the city-subsidized museum.

In 1999, the museum's "Sensation" show featured an elephant dung-embellished Virgin Mary. The mayor froze the museum's annual $7.2 million city subsidy — about a third of its annual budget — then sued in state court to evict the museum.

The museum filed a counter suit in federal court, where a judge ruled that the city had violated the First Amendment and restored the funding. The museum and the city ultimately came to terms.

This time, Giuliani said he would go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose decisions he said are based on "showing decency and respect for religion."

Related

"Newseum Radio: Exploring 'Yo Mama': Art, Outrage and the First Amendment"
Discussion of arts controversy on a panel at the First Amendment Center/New York. Host: Gene Policinski. Week in review: Max Cacas.  08.27.01