Officials of the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati tried to be
prudent: they restricted access to the museum to those over 18 and
relegated the most disturbing and explicit of the 175 photographs to a
separate, further isolated room. This was not enough, however, to keep a
local sheriff from staging a raid on the exhibit and seeking indictments
against museum director Dennis Barrie on obscenity charges; nor was it
enough to keep the grand jury from handing up an indictment.
Judge David J. Albanese of the Hamilton County court ruled earlier
this month that the charges had to go to trial and that the five
designated "obscene" photographs cannot even be considered in the context
of the entire Mapplethorpe show.
