# Cincinnati Mapplethorpe Obscenity Trial (1990) The first criminal obscenity prosecution of an American art museum — and the culture warriors' most public courtroom defeat of the era. After the [[Corcoran Mapplethorpe Cancellation]], Cincinnati's [[Contemporary Arts Center]] and director [[Dennis Barrie]] opened *The Perfect Moment* on schedule on **April 7, 1990** — in a city so socially conservative it had no adult bookstores and an anti-porn ordinance enforced by a sheriff who had made national reputation on vice raids. That day, a grand jury indicted the museum and Barrie on obscenity and child-pornography-related charges over seven of the 175 photographs; police briefly cleared the galleries to videotape the evidence while crowds outside chanted. The trial ran **September 24 – October 5, 1990**. The defense put curators and museum directors on the stand to walk the jury — eight jurors, mostly working-class, most of whom had never visited an art museum — through the *Miller* test's "serious artistic value" prong. The prosecution called essentially no expert witnesses, resting on the premise that the pictures spoke for themselves. On **October 5, 1990**, the jury acquitted on all counts. Jurors told reporters afterward that they didn't like the photographs — but the experts had established they were art, and that was the law. The acquittal mattered three ways: it proved obscenity prosecutions of institutions would fail under *Miller*; it made [[Dennis Barrie]] the model of institutional spine (against the Corcoran's cautionary opposite); and it pushed the [[NEA Culture Wars]] decisively away from criminal law and toward the funding lever — where, via the decency clause and [[NEA v. Finley]], the right ultimately won what the Cincinnati jury denied it. ## See Also - [[NEA Culture Wars]] — the full map - [[NEA Four]] — the funding-lever front that followed