A Matter of Principle

In Santa Fe one fine autumn day, the wind tore away the canvas covering a 2-by-4-ft. bas-relief on the wall of an annex to New Mexico's Capitol. The bas-relief looked sullen, weary and very nude and it shocked a passing citizen. At once he told his Baptist minister, who in turn marched off to protest to 65-year-old Governor Thomas J. Mabry that the sculptured figure's reclining position was "extremely suggestive."

The governor could not quite see what the fuss was about. He was "no longer intrigued by the sight of an undressed woman," he said somewhat irrelevantly, and furthermore a magazine called Finlandia Pictorial, then & there on his desk, showed all sorts of public nude statues in Finland. "We all know," said he, "that the Finns are a moral people." But Tom Mabry, a Democrat, was up for reelection, and arranged to hear both sides: the artists, and three churchmen, led by the head of the local Ministerial Alliance, a Protestant group.

The sculptor, William Longley, bearded and 27, insisted that his bas-relief--which the newspapers nicknamed "Miss Fertility"--was wholly without sex appeal. His supporters cited the nudes in Rome's Sistine Chapel. "Evil be to him," said one, "who evil thinketh." "I can show you things in the Bible," said famed Artist John Sloan to the protesting churchmen, "that would make this look like lemonade." No artist, he said, would find the sculpture pornographic.

"There are other people in the state besides artists," countered a churchman. Then, said Sloan, "it's up to us to educate these people." "It's up to me," replied the churchman coldly "to educate you."

"It would be cowardly." said the governor, "to take this [statue] down simply to appease certain people. If we start censorship, who will do the censoring?" Then, still thinking of November, he passed the buck to the building's architect, who had the nude taken down.

At week's end, a Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Freedom was trying to get it put back up. Their grounds: the architect hadn't the authority to take the nude down, since it was a public work; since the taxpayers paid for it, they had a say in its disposal.

The issue no longer was whether the nude was artistically good, or morally bad (a good many citizens seemed to think it was neither). The issue now, trumpeted the committee, was censorship. One J. Robert Jones, a letter-to-the-editor writer, summed it up: "I am a citizen of New Mexico, a taxpayer and property owner," wrote Mr. Jones, "and I think that the work in question looks like hell. But principles are principles."

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