The “culture wars” that erupted over arts funding in the 1980s and 1990s were all about bodies in art – the depiction and deployment of bodies and of sexuality in artistic works. Sometimes religious symbols were also in play (most memorably, perhaps, in Andre Serrano's “Piss Christ”); always, however, religious beliefs and attitudes were at issue, whether or not their role was blatant or claimed.

USC art historian Richard Meyer, author of Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (Oxford, 2002), addresses some of the ongoing effects of the culture wars on arts funding, sexuality, and religion. Meyer will consider several queer artists whose work has been censored since the late 1990s in local and state contexts, and will address the suppression of sexually explicit art from within the gay and lesbian communities and from without.

Following Meyer's presentation, Professors Holly Hughes, Carol Jacobsen, Petra Kuppers, and Robin Wilson will respond.

Richard Meyer is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Director of the Contemporary Project and the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (Oxford University Press: 2002), and co-author, with Anthony Lee, of Weegee and Naked City (University of California Press: 2008). Last year, he curated “Warhol's Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered” for the Jewish Museum in New York and the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. With Catherine Lord, he has just completed a survey text titled Art and Queer Culture, 1885-present which will appear in Phaidon's “Themes and Movements” series.