A Selective Timeline of Art Censorship in the U.S.A.: 1990

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The Supreme Court upholds district court rulings that the Flag Protection Act of 1989 is unconstitutional. A proposed Flag Protection Amendment falls short of the 2/3 approval required to amend the Constitution.

Karen Finley, In Performance

National Endowment for the Arts grants to Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes (the NEA Four) are vetoed by chairman John Frohnmayer after having been recommended by the agency's peer review panel. Three of the rejected artists are gay and deal with homosexual issues in their work; the fourth, Karen Finley, is an outspoken feminist. In 1993 courts rule in their favor and all receive compensation surpassing their grant amounts.

Congress passes an amendment, which requires that all NEA grants take into account "general standards of decency and respect of the diverse beliefs and values of the American public."

Joseph Papp, director of the New York Shakespeare festival, rejects a $50,000 NEA grant because of its requirement that grantees sign a statement that they would not produce "obscene" work.

A local sheriff stages a raid on a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective show at the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati and seeks indictment against museum director Dennis Barrie and the Arts Center itself on obscenity charges. The case goes to trial. Both Dennis Barrie and CAC are acquitted. Barrie leaves CAC shortly afterwards.

Broward County bans the sale of rap group 2 Live Crew's album Nasty as They Wanna Be. The album is found obscene by a federal judge. The decision is reversed on appeal.

States consider legislation to prohibit the sale of recordings with parental advisory warning stickers to those under 18.

Gran Fury, Kissing Doesn't Kill, 1989

FBI raids home and studio of photographer Jock Sturges, looking for "questionable photographs of juveniles."

The Chicago Transit Authority delays displaying a Gran Fury / Art Against AIDS poster, Kissing Doesn't Kill: Greed and Indifference Do, containing an image of same sex couples kissing, until city and state officials could create ordinances to ban "same sex affection" in CTA advertisements.

Under pressure from the Rutherford Institute the NEA pulls funding for the catalogue of Tongues of Flame, an exhibition of AIDS-related work by David Wojnarowicz at Illinois State University.