About three years ago, New York City mayor Rudy Giulianni attacked one of his city's public museums for a work that rankled his Catholic beliefs, a representation of the Madonna in cow dung. Going up against New York's unassailable arts community, he did not come off well for it. Hopefully Mayor Ma will learn from his example, though in Taipei the stakes are different.
Should Taipei choose to single out foreign artists as pornographers and set arbitrary moral standards for its museums, it will undermine years of international reputation building. Moreover it should realize that nudity and controversy are the province of art, especially according the standard toward which TFAM is striving. That's why it has paid around NT$20 million to bring foreign curators and artists for each for the last three Taipei Biennials. So rather than overturning its past, it would be far better for Taipei and the museum to give its youth art education program a realistic evaluation.
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