City Council President Clay Yarborough didn’t talk to Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville officials when he had an issue with the venue displaying a photograph of a nude, pregnant woman.
Instead, he went to Mayor Alvin Brown and asked him to pull funding — a move that puzzled the museum’s director.
More than a week — and a lot of controversy — later, Yarborough met with museum officials for a “conversation that was amicable” and dialogue that was “open and forthright,” according to the museum.
A news release Friday afternoon announced Yarborough had met with museum Director Marcelle Polednik and board chair Margaret Gallatly.
In the news release, museum officials explained why any compromise related to the image — 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 sent an email early Monday offering to provide a statement if it would be run in its entirety. The Daily Record told him it would not agree to those terms and requested the statement because it is a public record. Yarborough had not responded to the request as of press time.
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