Three Decades After Canceling Mapplethorpe Exhibit, Corcoran Examines Its Controversial Decision

[mahatmakanejeeves]

WAMU | JUN 13, 3:25 PM

Three Decades After Canceling Mapplethorpe Exhibit, Corcoran Examines Its Controversial Decision
Mikaela Lefrak

In June 1989, at the height of the AIDS crisis, staff members at the Corcoran Gallery of Art were preparing to open an exhibition of nearly 150 black-and-white photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. The photographer had died of AIDS that spring at the age of 42, and the exhibition, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, was supposed to be a retrospective of his work.

The images were striking: Many of them featured black bodies and white bodies intertwined in homoerotic poses. Some depicted sexually violent acts. Through Mapplethorpe’s lens, these bodies somehow appeared as both static sculptures and living presences.

But the public never got to see them. On June 13, 1989, two weeks before the retrospective was scheduled to open, the Corcoran canceled it. It was a decision that would change the course of the institution’s future. (The Corcoran was dissolved in 2014 after years of financial struggles.)

The intricacies of that fateful decision are now on display in a new exhibition, 6.13.89, at the Corcoran, which is now part of George Washington University’s Corcoran School of Art and Design. Graduate students pored through thousands of documents from the gallery’s archives to tell the story of the Mapplethorpe show’s conception, controversy and cancellation, as well as the community outcry that followed.
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[appalachiablue]

1. This was a huge deal in DC and the artworld I remember. A lot

of rancor was driven by the hard right which fiercely objected to the erotic, 'pornographic' and violent nature of Mapplethorpe's art and some who criticized his works as exploitative of black people. Still others fought to maintain the artist's vision, originality and right to free expression.

The Mapplethorpe exhibit controversy contributed to the Corcoran's decline, a path which was already underway. Questions about its stability, related to finances and changes in leadership over years and its less prominent status and location compared to the popular Smithsonian museums on the mall were known when I interned there in the early 1980s.

The new exhibit featuring Mapplethorpe's art is deserved and a most positive sign; hopefully the gallery is on a stronger course now under the guidance of GWU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe