Giuliani, Enemy of Art
By Robert Lederman 11/2/99
It’s no surprise. Mayor Giuliani has lost yet another First Amendment case, this time concerning the Brooklyn Museum. For six years he has been a concerted enemy of free speech in general and artistic expression in particular. Now, in a last ditch attempt to salvage his latest failed attempt at politically motivated censorship, the Mayor and his legal henchman, Corporation Counsel Michael D. Hess, are attacking the museum for allegedly using the show to economically benefit the Sensation exhibits owner, art dealer Charles Saatchi.
"This is all about dollar signs," Giuliani said Monday. "It isn't about free speech. It's actually a desecration of the First Amendment, as much as it is a desecration of religion, to use the First Amendment as a shield in order to take money out of the taxpayers' pockets in order to put that money into the pockets of multimillionaires." Giuliani wants us to believe that because the Brooklyn Museum receives public tax dollars, it cannot promote privately owned art in a way that would increase its value or benefit its owner.
Let’s be real. Every major art museum in NYC receives public tax dollars. At the same time, they were all created and continue to exist primarily to promote the reputation of their art collections and the public image of the billionaires that own or donated them. The largest single promoter of art in NYC is the Phillip Morris company, a cultural promoter whose tobacco products have killed tens of millions of people. The boards of directors of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are the wealthiest, and in some case most corrupt, real estate developers in the City and are at the same time the Mayor’s top campaign contributors. Every tax dollar spent on those museums directly benefits the reputation, social standing, political clout and business interests of those same board members.
Public employee Giuliani doesn’t merely allow but is deeply involved in promoting the business interests and reputation of corporations like the Yankees, American Express and Disney on publicly owned property. As part of these events millions of dollars in tax money are used for police for sanitation and for the salaries of Giuliani appointees who spend much of their time organizing and facilitating these same events. Every Disney promotion in Central Park and every Yankee pep rally on the steps of City with it’s politically exclusive guest list is just such a misuse of tax dollars.
Even more to the point, these events are being supported and facilitated by the Mayor in order to gain political advantage. His staff and every person he’s appointed to head a NYC agency spend virtually their entire time promoting the Mayor’s political image while collecting a fat salary at taxpayer expense. Even the most crucial City agencies like the police, Social Services and Public Health upon whose impartial performance civil society depends, are nothing more than political operatives in the Giuliani machine. Every decision they make has as its sole purpose the exaltation of Rudy Giuliani.
The only art Giuliani truly understands is the art of propaganda of which he is an expert practitioner. Giuliani knows the power artists have to undermine his credibility through the use of even a single image such as the little Hitler-like mustache I’ve added to his portraits over the years. Fearing the power of art, he knows he must not allow such dangerous freedom to exist in the hands of anyone not securely in his camp. That’s why he has had me falsely arrested 40 times since becoming Mayor.
If the Rockefeller’s Museum of Modern Art had shown Chris Olfilli’s work the Mayor would have said nothing. In fact, last year he gave MOMA, which insists on showing art stolen from Jews by the Nazis, a $65 million dollar gift from the taxpayers.
The Mayor’s own 1998 photo show in SoHo was sponsored by Leica cameras, a company that has publicly admitted using Jewish slave labor during WWII. Among the Mayor’s biggest corporate sponsors and beneficiaries is Chase Bank, a Rockefeller company that helped the Nazis close Jewish bank accounts during the war and turned the money over to the Third Reich. Are these facts not more offensive than an African artist who is himself a Catholic using elephant dung on a portrait of the Madonna?
Giuliani is the vilest kind of public official. Far worse than someone who engages in stealing public money to financially benefit himself is the public official that uses public money to violate the rights of the very people he is supposed to be protecting.
Enemy of art, enemy of free speech, enemy of civil liberties; like the dangerous chemicals he sprayed on eight million unsuspecting New Yorkers Giuliani is a toxic pest that must be eradicated before he spreads the disease of intolerance and despotism any further. This is one New York City cockroach we must show no mercy.
For information contact:
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics), Ph: 718-743-3722
Email: ARTISTpres@aol.com
Website: http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html