Corcoran Panel to Study Chief’s Fate

The board of Washington’s beleaguered Corcoran Gallery of Art played for time Monday, appointing a committee to study “some concerns,” including whether the famed art center should fire its director.

The decision to name a committee to study the fate of Christina Orr-Cahall--as well as issues of staff morale and exhibition policies--came at a meeting of the Corcoran board had been widely expected to result in the Orr-Cahall’s dismissal or forced resignation.

Orr-Cahall is widely credited with engineering a board vote to cancel a show of work by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in an ill-fated attempt to defuse a censorship controversy that has enveloped the National Endowment for the Arts.

“No votes were taken and none was called for,” said a Corcoran spokeswoman of the Monday board meeting. According to Corcoran president Freeborn Jewett, the spokeswoman said, there was “substantial and widespread expression of support for the director from individual trustees.”

The NEA provided $30,000 to print the program for the Mapplethorpe exhibition, which was organized by the Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. The Washington Project for the Arts subsequently accepted the show, which was viewed by nearly 50,000 visitors in a run of slightly less than a month.

The decision to cancel the Mapplethorpe show’s visit to the Corcoran was made in late June at a board meeting at which the vote was taken without advance warning, with the Mapplethorpe matter disguised in the last item on the agenda under the heading “other.”

The decision on whether to dismiss Orr-Cahall and the continuing flak from the decision to cancel the Mapplethorpe show has been widely reported to have divided the 54-member Corcoran board. One faction reportedly has urged retention of Orr-Cahall while another faction has contended she must be replaced in the wake of withdrawals of work by artists who were supposed to participate in upcoming shows. Several Corcoran shows have been canceled as a result.

The controversy arose when Orr-Cahall and the board moved to scuttle the Mapplethorpe show because Mapplethorpe’s work, which includes some graphically homoerotic and sadomasochistic work, was at the center of a dispute over content control of federally funded artwork. She said at the time she was attempting to defuse the political controversy, but the Corcoran’s move significantly intensified it, instead.

The dispute has pitted Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and other congressional conservatives against the NEA. A House-Senate conference committee scheduled to meet Wednesday is to debate language proposed by Helms and passed by the Senate barring federal funds for obscene, indecent or religiously offensive artworks.