Censorship of Art: A Timeline

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Under Construction

Most recent examples of censorship first.

2010, November 30

Hide/Seek Timeline: Part 1

1990-1998

The National Endowment for the Arts revoked federal grants to four performance artists, Karen Finley, John Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller. The four sued the NEA and challenged the constitutionality of its new "decency clause." They won their case in 1993, but the Clinton administration appealed, asking to have the decency clause stand, and the U.S. Supreme Court decided in the govenrment's favor in 1998.

1989, June 12-1990, March 20

Margaret Quigley. "The Mapplethorpe Controversy: Chronology of Events. The 1989-1991 Battles." Political Research Associates.

1964

Andy Warhol, commissioned to create an art work for the facade of the New YOrk State pavilioni at the World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, NY, produced Thirteen Most Wanted Men, a composite of police mug shots, including numbers of handsome young men. Worlds' Fair Officials painted over and destroyed the mural.

1958

United States Supreme Court ruled that the homophile magazine One was not obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy" simply because it discussed and visually depicted homosexuality.

1950

Officials at the Museum of Modern Art excluded Charles Demuth's picture "A Distinguished Air from a major Demuth retrospective.

1939

Paul Cadmus was commissioned by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts, to create a mural for the Parcel Post Building in Richmond, Virginia. His subject was Pocahontas Saving the Life of Captain John Smith. When the design for the mural was exhibited at Vassar College it caused controversy because it shows a breast fully exposed, a male warriors buttocks, and a phallic looking fox over another warriors crotch.

1934

The art of Paul Cadmus won attention in 1934 when the assistant secretary of the Navy, Henry Latrobe Roosevelt, removed Cadmus' painting The Fleet's In from a a show at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., because the government-sponsored painting, depicting drunken and lusty sailors, supposedly represented an unsavory image of the U.S. Navy. The resulting lawsuit and publicity opened the door to the artist career of Paul Cadmus..

Bibliography

GLBTQ.com: Censorship in the Arts.

Cites confiscation of homoerotic paintings of D.H. Lawrence, the destruction of "degenerate art" by the Nazis in Hitler-era Germany.

Cites censoring of photography Minor White in San Francisco.