PAINTING AT WHITNEY REVIVES MEMORIES OF “SENSATION”

“The American Effect,” the Whitney Museum of American Art’s new exhibition, opens with a painting by Chinese artist Zhou Tiehai that depicts a smiling Rudolph Giuliani looming above two balls of elephant dung. As the work’s wall text acknowledges, the painting alludes to 1999’s “Sensation” imbroglio, during which Giuliani tried to pull the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s public funding because of Chris Ofili’s dung-daubed depiction of the Virgin Mary. Newsday reports that Giuliani seems unperturbed by the new painting. “I’m really not an art critic,” he commented.