Rudy vs Brooklyn Museum (1999) w/ Harry Siegel
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s October 2nd. This day in 1999, a First Amendment battle is brewing between New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the Brooklyn Museum, which is mounting a controversial exhibit Giuliani deems “sick stuff.”
Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Harry Siegel of the podcast FAQ NYC to discuss how every side took advantage of the news cycle — and what the controversy presaged about today’s free speech debates.
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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia. |
| 0:07.0 | My name is Jody Avergan. This day, October 1999, Rudy Giuliani versus the Brooklyn Museum. |
| 0:18.0 | New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani did not like a new exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, |
| 0:22.4 | which among other things included a sculpture of a black virgin Mary composed in part with elephant dung. This and other controversial pieces of art in the exhibit were works that were in the private collection of a |
| 0:34.1 | London-based collector Saatchi that's important and will play into this but |
| 0:38.2 | Julianne gets wind of this art and he ends up calling it quote sick stuff but he didn't just disapprove on |
| 0:45.3 | aesthetic grounds he threatened to withhold public funding for the museum which is |
| 0:50.2 | really where this all went to the next level. |
| 0:52.7 | The city tried to withhold funding, a judge kind of indicated they would probably lose if they |
| 0:56.8 | went to court, they were warring press conferences, the press of course loved this. |
| 1:01.7 | Eventually they settled, but not before a big |
| 1:04.5 | conversation was sparked about art, religion, the First Amendment, public funding, |
| 1:08.3 | censorship, stuff that has kind of come roaring back as of late, not to mention that that guy Rudy |
| 1:14.8 | Giuliano he's still kicking around right so more or less let's talk about |
| 1:20.5 | this showdown with, as always, |
| 1:22.8 | Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. |
| 1:26.0 | Hello there. |
| 1:27.0 | Hello, Jody. |
| 1:27.9 | Hey there. |
| 1:28.9 | And our special guest for this episode |
| 1:30.4 | is Harry Siegel, editor the city columnist at the daily news |
| 1:34.7 | co-host of the podcast FAQ NYC and to my mind the best chronicler of all |
... |
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