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Giuliani, who is likely to run for Senate against Hillary Rodham Clinton, saw an opportunity. "He knows many people are uncomfortable with taxpayers subsidizing upper-middle-class decadence," says Fred Siegel, professor of U.S. history at New York City's Cooper Union. To subject this move by Giuliani to crass political analysis is to see brilliance; he won't win the artsy crowd anyway. Upstate voters, as well as the Roman Catholics across the state who often form a bloc of swing voters, will see him as protecting basic values. And Clinton must defend the art or keep quiet. Wisely, she chose the latter.
But would Giuliani really harm an important cultural institution that serves an otherwise art-starved neighborhood? Sure. By week's end, staff members were uttering his favorite words: "No negotiation." It's unclear, however, whether the mayor actually has the legal authority to refuse a check to an entity promised one in the budget he signed. The case will doubtless end up in court. There are constitutional issues too: the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot penalize artists solely because their work is disagreeable.
A silver lining for the artists and the museum will be the crowds that turn out to see what the fuss is about. "If I were the museum," says Mitchell Moss, a New York University urban expert whose family has a membership in the Brooklyn Museum, "I would send Giuliani a thank-you note."
--With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister/London