Policemen could independently initiate obscenity prosecutions against art galleries

Evidence

In late 1966, a month before Angry Arts Week, a Madison Avenue gallery exhibiting new work by Marc Morrel, a twenty-nine-year-old Black ex-marine, was busted. Morrel’s work consisted largely of fabric constructions based on the American flag. Flags were wrapped around coffins and swaddled with chains. One flag formed a hangman’s noose. Another was bundled in the form of an erect penis. A policeman, apparently acting on his own volition, spotted the noose in the gallery window and charged gallery owner Stephen Radich with exhibiting various flag desecrations in violation of Section 1425 of the penal law. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1630

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the gentrification origin thesis — a single cop acting on his own volition triggers a landmark free-speech case, showing how institutional friction responded to early art-world activity in what would become SoHo.