Zócalo Public Square

At an event exploring the legacy of Robert Mapplethorpe's legacy hosted by Zócalo Public Square/Getty “Open Art” at the West Hollywood Council Chambers, panelist Jonathan Weinberg argued that the photographer "mainstreamed and made slick a certain kind of presentation of the homoerotic." Weinberg, a painter, art historian, and author of Male Desire: The Homoerotic in American Art, was joined on the panel by an author, two curators and a photography collector. Though the controversy that began in 1989 over a traveling solo exhibit with homoerotic and sadomasochistic themes gained Mapplethorpe significant fame, the panelists agreed that the ongoing interest in his work demonstrates a provocation far deeper than shock.