-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Subject: Art Dealer Is Arrested for Exhibition of Live Ammunition Please remember, friends, that this is in the same city where a dung- adorned Virgin Mary is defended as "freedom of expression," and the Mayor (whom I generally do not admire) is under attack for withholding tax dollars from the exhibiting museum. Regards, Olga http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/093099boone-gallery.html September 30, 1999 Art Dealer Is Arrested for Exhibition of Live Ammunition By ANDY NEWMAN A prominent Manhattan art dealer was arrested on Wednesday night at her Fifth Avenue gallery, where an exhibition included a vase full of live 9-millimeter cartridges for visitors to take home as souvenirs, the police said. The dealer, Mary Boone, was charged with unlawful distribution of ammunition and with resisting arrest, said Detective Joseph Pentangelo, a police spokesman. She was also charged with possession of unlawful weapons and possession of stolen property for another piece in the one-man show by the sculptor Tom Sachs, which featured homemade guns, Detective Pentangelo said. Ms. Boone was being held at the Midtown North precinct house early this morning and was expected to be taken to Manhattan Central Booking to spend the night in jail, the detective said. All of the charges are misdemeanors. The arrest of Ms. Boone, 48, a flamboyant, sharply dressed art- world celebrity who came to prominence in the 1980's, comes in the midst of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's battle with the Brooklyn Museum of Art over a painting of the Virgin Mary partly obscured by pieces of elephant dung. The Police Department's chief spokeswoman, Marilyn Mode, said that the two events were unrelated. "It is irresponsible, at the very least, to be distributing live ammunition to the public," Ms. Mode said. "This has nothing to do with the Brooklyn Museum." Joseph J. Lhota, a deputy mayor, declined to comment on Ms. Boone's arrest, saying he did not know enough about the case. Sachs, whose work deals with consumer culture, packaging and violence, placed the cartridges in an Alvar Aalto glass vase on the reception desk of the gallery at 745 Fifth Avenue, just north of 58th Street. Visitors were invited to take the cartridges home in orange air-sickness bags that were decorated to look like bags from Hermès. Ms. Mode said the police had received a complaint about the show, which opened on Sept. 10, on Wednesday and had gone to the fourth-floor gallery around 5 P.M. "We were told that this ammunition was available for anyone to pick up at this art gallery and we just looked into it," she said. "We wanted to see if it was bullets or foil-wrapped chocolates, and they're definitely not chocolate bullets." While detectives were waiting to speak to Ms. Boone, they wandered into the main part of the gallery and noticed a cabinet on the wall holding homemade guns -- Sachs's signature object -- and what appeared to be more live cartridges, Ms. Mode said. They decided to take all the suspect objects, as well as an unwilling Ms. Boone, into custody until they could determine which things were potentially explosive and which were works of art, Ms. Mode said. After technicians from the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms determined that the bullets were live, Ms. Boone was charged with unlawful possession and disposal of ammunition. Later in the evening, when Sachs's homemade guns were deemed functional, the police added charges of criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a shotgun, Detective Pentangelo said. The stolen- property charge was added because the container that the guns were in was made of stolen materials, the detective said, but would not give details. Ms. Boone's lawyer, Ted Poretz, who was at the station house with her, declined to comment for the record. Norman Siegel, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that Ms. Boone had a potential claim under the free-speech clause of the First Amendment if the exhibit was reasonably understood as artistic expression. Unlike a bank robbery, which the bank robber cannot retroactively define as performance art, the exhibit in Ms. Boone's gallery would probably meet this standard, he said. But, Siegel added: "There is a second legal standard, known as a countervailing interest, that would appear to be a problem. The argument would be that people shouldn't be handing out live bullets." Ms. Mode said that claims to artistic expression were meaningless in the face of actions that posed a threat to public safety. "If this were simply someone handing bullets out on the street, you would criticize us greatly for not doing something about it," she said. "This is an unsupervised exhibit with a glass vase filled with bullets, live ammunition." Ms. Boone, who was called the "Queen of the Art World" on the cover of New York magazine in the 1980's, made her name putting on the first one-man shows by the Neo-Expressionist painters Julian Schnabel and David Salle. Her artists today include Barbara Kruger, Brice Marden and Eric Fischl. After she moved the gallery uptown from SoHo in the early 90's, she seemed to move from center stage, but in the last year or so has started to put on shows by more provocative artists, like Sachs, whose "Hello Kitty Nativity Scene" was removed from display in the store window at Barney's after complaints from religious groups. Sachs's show at Ms. Boone's gallery also features a working airplane lavatory made of construction foam. A review of the show in The Village Voice this week praised Sachs for his clever constructions, but added, "None of this, however, saves Sachs's work from shallowness." -----------------------------End of Forwarded Message----------------------------- To test a man's character, give him power. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
