Brooklyn Institute of Arts v. City of New York

• Decision Date: 01 November 1999
• Docket Number: No. 99 CV 6071.,99 CV 6071.
• Citation: 64 F.Supp.2d 184
• Parties: THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, Plaintiff, v. THE CITY OF NEW YORK and Rudolph W. Giuliani, individually and in his official capacity as Mayor of the City of New York, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York

64 F.Supp.2d 184

THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, Plaintiff, v. THE CITY OF NEW YORK and Rudolph W. Giuliani, individually and in his official capacity as Mayor of the City of New York, Defendants.

No. 99 CV 6071.

United States District Court, E.D. New York.

November 1, 1999.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Floyd Abrams, Susan Buckley, Cahill, Gordon & Reindel, New York City, for Plaintiff.

Michael D. Hess, Leonard Koerner, City of New York Law Dept., New York City, for Defendants.

Opinion and Order

GERSHON, District Judge.

The Mayor of the City of New York has decided that a number of works in the Brooklyn Museum's currently showing temporary exhibit "Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection" are "sick" and "disgusting" and, in particular, that one work, a painting entitled "The Holy Virgin Mary" by Chris Ofili, is offensive to Catholics and is an attack on religion. As a result, the City has withheld funds already appropriated to the Museum for operating expenses and maintenance and, in a suit filed in New York State Supreme Court two days after the Museum filed its suit in this court, seeks to eject the Museum from the City-owned land and building in which the Museum's collections have been housed for over one hundred years.

The Museum seeks a preliminary injunction barring the imposition of penalties by the Mayor and the City for the Museum's exercise of its First Amendment rights. The City and the Mayor move to dismiss the Museum's suit in this court, insofar as it seeks injunctive and declaratory relief, on the ground that this court must abstain from exercising jurisdiction in favor of the New York court action, in which, they argue, the Museum may assert, by way of defense and counterclaim, its First Amendment claims. For the reasons that follow, defendants' motion is denied, and plaintiff's motion is granted.

BACKGROUND

An examination of the history of the Brooklyn Museum and its relationship to the City of New York will illuminate the current controversy.

I. The History of the Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum traces its origin to the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library, founded in 1823, whose book collection was first permanently housed in a Brooklyn Heights building constructed in 1825, reportedly after General Lafayette laid its cornerstone on the Fourth of July. A successor entity, the Brooklyn Institute, incorporated in 1843, expanded its holdings of books, natural history specimens and, to a lesser extent, art objects during the ensuing decades of the nineteenth century. By the late 1880's, prominent citizens and public figures of the then independent City of Brooklyn conceived an ambitious plan to vastly expand the Brooklyn Institute's collections in a mammoth new building, which would rival the combined collections of New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Natural History.

The City of New York had already established in the 1870's a relationship with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History that would serve as a prototype for the City's relationship with other designated cultural institutions, and for the relationship of the Brooklyn Museum with the cities of Brooklyn and later New York. That relationship is described in the official "Procedures Manual for New York City's Designated Cultural Institutions," at 3, as "joint partnerships between the City and a group of private citizens." The Procedures Manual describes that state legislation was passed to incorporate those two museums, authorizing the City to construct the museums' facilities and to lease those facilities and the City-owned parkland on which they were located to the new corporations. The museums, in turn, "became responsible for programming the facilit[ies] and acquiring and exhibiting [their] collections. The leases ... contemplate that the City will maintain the building[s] while the [museums oversee] the display of [their] collection[s] to the general public."

In keeping with this historical precedent, the New York State Legislature in 1889 authorized the City of Brooklyn to reserve a portion of Prospect Park as "building sites for museums of art and science and libraries," and to lease such sites at nominal rent for up to one hundred years to corporations "created for educational purposes," provided that "such museums and libraries shall at all reasonable times be free, open and accessible to the public and private schools of the said city, and open and accessible to the general public on such terms of admission as the said mayor and commissioners shall approve ...." L. 1889, c. 372, § 2.

The Brooklyn Institute was reorganized into the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the formal name of the plaintiff in this action (now known as the "Brooklyn Museum of Art" or "Brooklyn Museum" and sometimes referred to here as the "Museum"), by the New York State Legislature in 1890. The Act formally incorporating the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, L. 1890, c. 172, designated by name approximately fifty private individuals as the original trustees of the Institute, and authorized the Institute to adopt its own constitution, bylaws, and all appropriate rules and regulations for its self-governance. Id. §§ 4, 5. Subsequent laws added public officials as ex officio members of the Board of Trustees, including the Mayor, Comptroller, Park Commissioner and Borough President. L. 1893, c. 579, as amended, L.1934, c. 87 and L.1949, c. 127. The 1890 Act further provides:

Section 2. The purposes of said corporation shall be the establishment and maintenance of museums and libraries of art and science, the encouragement of the study of the arts and sciences and their application to the practical wants of man, and the advancement of knowledge in science and art, and in general to provide the means for popular instruction and enjoyment through its collections, libraries and lectures.

Section 3. The museums and libraries of said corporation shall be open and free to the public and private schools of said city, at all reasonable times, and open to the general public on such terms of admission as shall be approved by the mayor and park commission of said city.

On December 23, 1893, as authorized by state law, the City of Brooklyn leased the land to the Institute for a term of one hundred years (the "Lease"), tracking the language of the 1889 Act as to the use of the property and the requirements for access by schools and the general public. The Lease further provides that "if and when such museums ... shall cease to be maintained according to the true intent and meaning of said act, and of this lease, then this lease shall be forfeited, and the said lands, and buildings thereon erected shall revert to the City of Brooklyn." Pursuant to other Acts of the New York State Legislature (L. 1891, c. 89; L. 1894, c. 577; L. 1896, c. 406), the City of Brooklyn funded construction of a building on the site designed by the noted architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White (although only a fraction of the original ambitious building plan was ever completed), to be leased to the Institute.

Upon completion of construction of a wing of the new building, the City of Brooklyn entered into a building lease and contract (the "Contract") with the Institute, for a term coextensive with the Lease, to house the Institute's collections. The City of New York is the successor to the City of Brooklyn under the Lease and the Contract. The parties agree that, upon the expiration of the original term of the Lease agreement in December 1993, the Museum remained a tenant in possession of the land and the building on the same terms and conditions as contained in the Lease and Contract.

The Contract provides that:

The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences ... shall place on exhibition in said Museum Building collections of paintings and other works of art and collections and books representing or illustrating each and all of the Departments of the arts and sciences named in the constitution of said Institute, and shall cause to be properly arranged, labelled and catalogued all such collections and books as may be open to public exhibition or for public use, for the instruction and benefit of the residents of Brooklyn or the general public.

The Contract is unequivocal that the City has no ownership rights with respect to any of the collections in the Museum. It provides:

That the collections of books and other objects in art and sciences placed in the Museum Building for purposes of exhibition, instruction, or to enable the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences to carry out its purposes as authorized in its charter, shall continue to be and shall remain absolutely the property of the [Institute], and that neither the [Mayor nor the City of Brooklyn] by reason of said property being placed in said building or continuance therein, have any title, property or interest therein.

The Museum established, as a branch, the first children's museum in the world in 1899. Throughout the first decades of this century, the Museum's collections greatly expanded, with Departments of Fine Arts, Natural Sciences, and a newly-established Department of Ethnology. The Museum decided in the 1930's to focus on its collections of fine art and cultural history, and to abandon its mission as a science museum. The Museum's natural history specimens were sent to other institutions. In 1934, the State legislature amended the description of the Institute's purpose quoted above, by adding reference to establishment and maintenance of "botanical gardens" and the provision of popular instruction and enjoyment through "musical and other performances." L.1934, c. 87. In the 1970's, various components of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences became independent institutions, including the Brooklyn Children's Museum, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

The Museum today describes...