“The Holy Virgin Mary” — Chris Ofili’s painting of a black Madonna surrounded by close-ups of female genitalia cut from porno magazines and dollops of elephant dung — is on display in New York for the first time since 1999.
The painting — then exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art — sparked protests and a lawsuit brought by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who declared, “There’s nothing in the First Amendment that supports horrible and disgusting projects!”
Now the controversial canvas is at the Ofili retrospective opening Wednesday at the New Museum on the Bowery, where artistic director Massimiliano Gioni isn’t expecting any complaint from Mayor de Blasio.
Fifteen years of culture wars have passed since Giuliani tried to defund the Brooklyn Museum, and the New Museum is invulnerable to political pressure.
“We’re a private museum, so it’s a very different story,” a spokeswoman for the Lower East Side institution told me.
Ofili, born in England to Nigerian parents before moving to Trinidad, was raised Roman Catholic and has said, “Elephant dung in itself is quite a beautiful object.”