Since the controversy about a picture of a nude pregnant woman surfaced last week, the main critic and museum officials hadn’t met.
But on Friday, City Council President Clay Yarborough and Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville leaders Marcelle Polednik and Margaret Gellatly met for a “conversation that was amicable” and dialogue that was “open and forthright,” according to the museum.
Polednik is the museum’s director, Gellatly the museum’s board chair.
In the news release, museum officials explained why any compromise related to the picture — part of Angela Strassheim’s exhibition — wasn’t possible because it would be censorship. That meant not removing the picture, screening or marking the image “as anything other than appropriate expression of artistic merit.”
“Rather than discuss a compromise of a matter already definitively settled by Mayor Alvin Brown’s office and his counsel, MOCA representatives suggested that the focus should be on continued dialogue and the City Council president getting to know the cultural organizations of Jacksonville, their inimitable professional standards, and the work they do to benefit the community,” according to the news release.
Yarborough sought to pull more than $233,000 of funding from the museum because of the display, which he termed “pornographic.” He asked Brown to pull the funding, but the mayor didn’t citing First Amendment rights. A rally was staged Wednesday at City Hall to protest Yarborough’s viewpoint and attempt to pull funding.
According to the release, museum officials and Yarborough agreed to continue the conversations about how arts shape Jacksonville.
Yarborough said Friday afternoon he did not yet have a comment about the meeting or the issue itself. He hasn’t spoken publicly about the matter since his initial statements last week. Tuesday night, he said he would talk about any possible next steps in next several days. Yarborough was in New York on Thursday for meetings with bond rating agencies.
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