ARTS

Jurors Say Mapplethorpe Photos Are Art: Jurors who acquitted a Cincinnati art gallery and its director of obscenity charges said that although they personally found some of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs to be lewd and distasteful, all agreed they are serious works of art. “The pictures were not pretty. No doubt about it,” juror James Jones told the Cincinnati Enquirer in a story published Sunday. “But, as it was brought up in the trial, to be art it doesn’t have to be pretty.” The jury deliberated two hours Friday before clearing Dennis Barrie and the Contemporary Arts Center of misdemeanor obscenity and child-nudity charges in the first case of its kind against an art institution.