Robert Mapplethorpe was a fearless artist who was able to photograph New York socialites and underground sex clubs and flowers with same brilliant sense of drama in his composition and lighting. He was also a gay man living through the worst of the AIDS epidemic that people were still calling “gay cancer”. So when a retrospective of his work was scheduled to tour museums as he himself was dying of the disease, he became the lighting rod for the scorn of politicians and religious figures who saw him as everything that was wrong with society’s acceptance of homosexuality, and art.

What followed was a maelstrom of controversy and government censorship that involved a police raid, the arrest of a museum director, cancellations, fisting, and a famous bullwhip.

We’ll be giving a talk on this exhibition with original materials from the museum at the middle of it, and images from the three portfolios so you can decide for yourself if all the controversy was warranted.

Pay what you wish. Trigger warning: Images of nudity, extreme sexual acts, and flowers.