Mirth & Girth is a portrait painting by School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) student David K. Nelson, Jr. It was painted in response to what the artist described as the deification of the popular African-American mayor of Chicago, Illinois, Harold Washington, after his sudden death on November 25, 1987 due to cardiac arrest. The painting depicted Washington wearing only a bra, G-string, garter belt and stockings. After a brief showing at a May 11, 1988 private student exhibition in the institute, angry African-American aldermen arrived with Chicago Police Department officers and confiscated the painting, triggering a First Amendment and race relations crisis.
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| - Mirth & Girth is a portrait painting by School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) student David K. Nelson, Jr. It was painted in response to what the artist described as the deification of the popular African-American mayor of Chicago, Illinois, Harold Washington, after his sudden death on November 25, 1987 due to cardiac arrest. The painting depicted Washington wearing only a bra, G-string, garter belt and stockings. After a brief showing at a May 11, 1988 private student exhibition in the institute, angry African-American aldermen arrived with Chicago Police Department officers and confiscated the painting, triggering a First Amendment and race relations crisis.
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| - Allan Streeter, 17th Ward Alderman
- Jay Miller, executive director for the ACLU
- Judge Richard A. Posner, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
- James A. Brame, president of the Illinois Alliance of Black Student Organizations
- Marshall Field, Chairman of the Art Institute of Chicago
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| - If there was a threat, the way to prevent a riot would have been to protect the painting and arrest the rioters and hecklers. What they did was arrest the painting.
- We understand students have First Amendment rights, but we do not condone or support the use of the First Amendment to disparage the memory of an important leader like the late Mayor Harold Washington.
- So we must ask whether in 1988 the law was clear that local government officials may not go onto private property without invitation , seize a painting that they do not like because it vilifies a public official with whom they had been associated, and wrap it in brown paper and remove it so that no one can see it. To ask the question is pretty much to answer it. As Chief Justice Warren said in another case involving an effort to suppress public criticism of a mayor of Chicago, "This is a simple case."
- The Art Institute has long been a closed bastion of white male Western cultural supremacy.
- There is a moral responsibility here that transcends, as far as I'm concerned, transcends the courts, transcends the First Amendment.
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| - Mirth & Girth is a portrait painting by School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) student David K. Nelson, Jr. It was painted in response to what the artist described as the deification of the popular African-American mayor of Chicago, Illinois, Harold Washington, after his sudden death on November 25, 1987 due to cardiac arrest. The painting depicted Washington wearing only a bra, G-string, garter belt and stockings. After a brief showing at a May 11, 1988 private student exhibition in the institute, angry African-American aldermen arrived with Chicago Police Department officers and confiscated the painting, triggering a First Amendment and race relations crisis. Free-speech advocates condemned the seizure of the painting, while the aldermen maintained that the painting was an insult to Washington and should have been taken down. Some students at the SAIC showed their support for free speech by holding rallies in front of the school and at the Richard J. Daley Plaza. Remembering the city's recent "Council Wars" between Washington and mostly-white aldermanic majority, other students criticized Nelson for poor timing in showing a racially insensitive image. At some point between when the painting was confiscated and when it was returned, a gash was made in the painting. Nelson filed and later won a federal lawsuit against the city, claiming that the painting's confiscation and subsequent damaging violated his First Amendment rights. He and the ACLU settled with the city for US$95,000 (1994, US$138,000 in 2008) in compensation for the damaged painting after the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld the lower court's decision.
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