The polemics surrounding 1999's Sensation Exhibition at The Brooklyn Museum of Art seem a bit tiresome today. Featuring only contemporary British art (need we be reminded) originating entirely from advertising tycoon Charles Saatchi's private collection, the show was first exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1997 and had already garnered some controversy, but only in terms of being, to some viewers, offensive. Of course, the uproar faded and the tabloids long ago put to rest Chris Ofili's elephant dung—glued to his portrait of the Virgin Mary—and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's outrage. But, if collective memory may recall, Giuliani himself described Ofili's "The Holy Virgin Mary" as "perverted and anti-Catholic," and before the exhibition had even opened in New York the Mayor did his best to shut it down. In response, United States federal judge Nina Gershon ruled against Giuliani's withdrawal of public funding for the museum's annual budget and his efforts to evict the museum from city-owned property. Giuliani's actions were deemed a violation of the First Amendment, and all municipal funding was restored.

An interesting and forgotten detail of the city's smear campaign against the museum was that Sensation was financed by individuals and corporations who stood to gain profit from an increased value of these particular works of art. In other words, it was in the interest of Charles Saatchi, David Bowie (who narrated the audio tour and promoted the show for free), and the various art collectors who donated to the show by attending an expensive opening night gala to see that the exhibition was a success. Christie's Auction House, which co-sponsored the event with Saatchi, certainly had finance in mind when they contributed $50,000 to the show. This was no doubt an effort made by all of the exhibition's benefactors to see Young British Art soar in the market.

But the city's argument that this was an "unethical" fundraising technique on the part of Arnold L. Lehman, the Museum's director, did not make so much as a dent in public opinion. Nor did an article printed on October 31, 1999 in the New York Times, claiming that the museum raised "hundreds of thousands of dollars" from people who would profit from the showl. Disappointingly, these serious allegations were ignored and the malfeasance of Saatchi's personal fortune and political ties were left untouched by the American art world.

It is easy to forget why one should hate Charles Saatchi. The whole subject seems, dare it be said, a bit passe. But it is no less important to know why the real controversy about the Sensation exhibition had nothing to do with pornography or dead fish in formaldehyde. Even if YBA art has lost its shocking impact, its stars are still feuding with the man who made them famous.

''I'm not Charles Saatchi's barrel-organ monkey," artist Damien Hirst was quoted as saying in an interview with the Guardian on April 18,2000. "He only recognises [sic] art with his wallet... He believes he can affect art values I with buying power, and he still believes he can do it." Hirst's retaliation against Saatchi for his manipulation of the art market has become the stuff of tabloids at this point: the artist famously bought back some of his artwork from Saatchi's collection, he refused to participate in a retrospective of his own work, and he even removed mention of the Saatchi-conceived retrospective from his CV. Most recently, the Guardian reported in February 2005 that Hirst planned to open his own gallery on the south bank of the Thames, directly competing with Saatchi's relocated gallery in the former County Hall building just up the river.

Giving Charles Saatchi the middle finger is hardly something new, and Hirst has been criticized for the I manner in which he's gone about it. Increasing his work's value by peddling it on the free market, Hirst is no less the entrepreneurial dealer than Saatchi himself. Worse, he has failed to point out the original source of Saatchi's wealth: creating advertising campaigns for clients such as Margaret Thatcher, the pro-apartheid South African National Party, the Arts Council of Great Britain, and many other government-owned institutions over which the collector's company, Saatchi & Saatchi, exercised its influence. About their relationship with Britan's conservative Tories, Maurice Saatchi once acknowledged, "We owe them everything ... " ²

The artist who first brought public attention to Saatchi & Saatchi's collaborations with right-wing political groups— and its influence on national funding for the arts— was German artist Hans Haacke. It was his painting "Taking Stock (unfinished)" that so infuriated Charles Saatchi that the collector resigned from the board of London's Whitechapel Gallery and the Patrons of New Art at the Tate, where the work was first exhibited. In this painting, a mock official portrait of Margaret Thatcher, two broken plates, displayed on a bookshelf behind the former Prime Minister, feature the faces and initials of Maurice and Charles Saatchi. Later commenting on the piece, Haacke charged that the Saatchi brothers' innumerable donations of contemporary art to the Tate were no more than a "vehicle for power, prestige and social climbing." ³

By 1984 Haacke's work was already synonymous with the politics of patronage. Thirteen years prior to the Tate incident, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York cancelled a solo exhibition of his work because one of their Board members was directly criticized in Haacke's piece "Shapolsky et al., Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time Social System as of May 1,1971." According to the Tate Modern's literature about the piece:

"Shapolsky et aI., Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real Time Social System, as of May 1, 1997," is the product of Haacke's research into the real estate holdings of the Shapolsky family in Manhattan. Harry Shapolsky had attracted Haacke's attention because he was the landlord who owned more slum properties than any other landowner in New York. Haacke's research—all culled from public records—reveals how Shapolsky's business worked, different properties being held under different company names. The series of 142 photographs of the facades of tenement buildings, accompanied by typewritten data sheets, added up to a biting indictment of the monopoly of one family of wealthy proprietors over the slums of a particular area. Due to be displayed in an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York entitled Hans Haacke: Systems, the work was deemed "inappropriate" by the museum's management, and the Guggenheim decided to close down the exhibition. The curator, who defended the work, was fired. As a result of the ensuing furore, "Shapolsky et al." became one of the most talked about works of the early 1970s.

Haacke caused yet another stir two decades later at the Whitney Museum of American Art's Biennial of 2000 in New York. His piece "Sanitation" consequently attacked Rudolph Giuliani's handling of the Sensation exhibit—this time using sound, text, and everyday objects (namely trash bins) to link Giuliani's censorship of certain artworks with the Nazis' notorious Degenerate Art exhibition. This was predictably misinterpreted as a comparison of Giuliani and Hitler. Despite Haacke's concerted effort to clarity the criticism—stating that the Nazis and the New York City government used very similar language about "civilization" and what is worthy of taxpayer dollars—a percentage of the public expressed outrage. Haacke was accused of belittling the Holocaust, and members of the Board inevitably spoke up about it. The Whitney's Director, Maxwell L. Anderson, released a statement defending Haacke, asserting that his piece "is meant to remind us of the worst excesses of suppressing free speech." ⁵

Haacke's lifelong commitment to unveiling the dark side of art patronage is more relevant now than ever. As cultural institutions have had to turn more and more to private sources of funding, corporate magnates a la Charles Saatchi I now dominate boards at every major museum. Few artists of the young and British variety have the interest in or guts to bite the hand that feeds them—or, like Hirst, they've merely become another hand worth biting. More important than the politics of the art market, however, is the way that corporate culture has changed the curatorial choices that museums now feel obliged to make. And, much scarier, the choices artists now make when making art.

"With respect to the artists who have been collected. in the Sensation show—there is a strange co-mingling of attitudes that are peculiar to advertising and the promotion of an art market," said Haacke in an interview with Andrew Gellatly for eye storm in 2003. One wonders if the artists had Saatchi and hundreds of other opening night gala guests in mind while they were painting, sketching, polyestering, and glue-gunning the pieces featured in the collector's last big exhibit. There are no doubt artists who make work they know will appease, because they know it will sell, and so long as they succeed at this appeasement, one day they will be rich enough to buy their own work back.

¹ David Barstow, "BrookIynMuseum Recruited Donors Who Stood to Gain," New York Times, A1.
² Walter Grasskamp, et al., Hans Haacke (Phaidon, 2004), p.114.
³ Jamelie Hassan, "Hans Haacke at The Mendei Art Gallery, Saskatoon, May 15 - June 21," Vanguard (Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art), Vol. 16 No.4, Sept/Oct 1987.
⁴ Tate Modern press literature for the Open System: Rethinking Art c.1970 exhibition, June 1 - September 18, 2005.
⁵ www.whitney.org/exhibition/2kb/director.html