The New Gatekeepers: Emerging Challenges to Free Expression in the Arts

Disputes over free expression in the arts have always loomed as struggles between creativity and repression, transgression and outrage, candor and hypocrisy. But while high-profile shootouts at art museums and less visible skirmishes at schools, libraries, and theaters persist, overt censorship is no longer the only, or the most dire, threat to free expression. On the one hand, society has become more accepting of provocative imagery, with media conglomerates often leading the way in the depreciation of taboos. On the other hand, artists, while enjoying some unprecedented liberties, are hemmed in by new constraints that often fall beyond the range of First Amendment protection. The current terrain bears little resemblance to the culture wars of a decade ago, much less to what the First Amendment's Framers could have imagined. And since Sept. 11, 2001, the frontlines of the free-expression debate have been shifting once again. Based on a Columbia University conference organized by the National Arts Journalism Program, The New Gatekeepers explores the reconfigured ranks of those who decide what the public gets to see, hear and read, from struggles over intellectual property and copyright, to continuing debates about acceptable and offensive content in the cultural marketplace, to the less visible biases of the arts funding system. This heavily illustrated book also includes a historical overview of censorship and contributions by 40 scholars, artists, experts and journalists from around the United States. Discussed and participating artists include Edouard Manet, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Serra, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Andres Serrano, Carolee Schneemann, Dread Scott, Gran Fury, Joel-Peter Witkin, Kara Walker, Jock Sturges, Chris Ofili, and Tom Sachs.

Dinos Chapman was born in London in 1962 and Jake Chapman was born in Cheltenham in 1966. They both graduated from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1990 and began collaborating shortly thereafter. Shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2003, they first came to attention in the 1990s with their three-dimensional recreations of Goya's Disasters of War etchings, an ongoing obsession with them. Two of the most celebrated of the Young British Artists (YBAs), they have exhibited in the notorious Sensation show and its follow-up, Apocalypse.

Chris Ofili (born 1968) is an English painter noted for works referencing aspects of his African background. He is one of the best-known Young British Artists, a Turner Prize winner, and the source of one of the New York art world's biggest scandals. It was Ofili's painting, a depiction of a black African Virgin Mary surrounded by images from blaxploitation movies and close-ups of female genitalia cut from pornographic magazines, that caused then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to close the infamous Sensation exhibition at The Brooklyn Museum in 1999.

Edouard Manet, (1832-1883), is known for his depictions of cafe life in Paris, including The Bar at the Folies-Bergere, and for his nudes, as in such the iconic Olympia and Le dejeuner sur l'herbe. His Impressionist-era work, with its stark black-and-white motifs and dark outlines, has also been called early Modern.

Damien Hirst dominated the British art scene of the 1990s. The leading figure of the YBAs (Young British Artists), he has become one of the best known British artists of the later 20th Century. Hirst has exhibited his work worldwide including at the Gagosian Gallery, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; MFA Boston; White Cube, London, and the Dallas Museum, Texas, among many others.

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1955. The former Wall Street commodities broker rose to prominence in the mid-80s and has been the subject of numerous solo museum exhibitions, such as those seen at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Bilbao Guggenheim, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Koons currently lives in New York.