Cincinnati v. Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center - Significance, Obscenity Or Art?, The Nea And Sexually Explicit Art, Further Readings

Cincinnati v. Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center - Further Readings

Cincinnati v. Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center - Significance

The acquittal of the Mapplethorpe defendants was a major reaffirmation of First Amendment freedom of speech protection in the realm of homosexual art. In the spring of 1990, the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati, Ohio held an exhibit of photographs by the late artist Robert Mapplethorpe. The exhibit was controversial from the start because of the openly homosexual nature of much of Mapp…

Cincinnati v. Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center - Obscenity Or Art?

The prosecutors had to convince the jury that the seven pictures were legally obscene, as "obscene" was defined by the Supreme Court in the 1973 case Miller v. California. Miller stated that material is obscene only if: (1) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the material as a whole appeals to the prurient interest; (2) the material depicts or describes s…

Cincinnati v. Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center - The Nea And Sexually Explicit Art

Congress established the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in 1965 as an institution to distribute grant monies to artists and arts organizations. Beginning in 1989, with a controversy over an NEA-funded exhibit of photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe, the NEA has been at the center of a controversy over publicly funded art. On one side are those who profess themselves proponents of fre…