NY Art Gallery Owner Describes Night in Jail

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sun Oct 3 00:15:45 PDT 1999


[She says Guiliani arrested her the night before the exhibit to make a point.]

October 3, 1999

Art Gallery Owner Describes Night in Jail

By DAVID ROHDE

I n the 1980's, her imperious attitude, outspokenness and stable of

talented artists carried her to the top of the ultra-competitive and

ultra-lucrative world of New York art dealing. But in a matter of

hours Wednesday night, Mary Boone says, she was reduced to a meek,

frightened prisoner who spoke only when spoken to, feared beatings by

prostitutes and drug addicts, and dutifully asked for permission to go

to the bathroom.

In an extensive interview on Saturday that followed her arrest

Wednesday on charges of distributing live ammunition and displaying

two working guns at an art show in her Fifth Avenue gallery, Ms. Boone

described her 26 hours among what she said were sneering detectives,

belligerent prisoners and urine-soaked jail cells.

Ms. Boone said detectives grabbed her by the hair and threw her

against a wall when she was arrested, crudely insulted her and

handcuffed her to a chair for six hours in the station house of the

Midtown North Precinct, where she was fingerprinted.

She said she spent the night in a rancid precinct jail cell with a

broken toilet and a narrow bench, and the entire next day in a group

holding cell with "prostitutes, drug addicts and alcoholics getting

the D.T.'s" in the infamous Manhattan Detention Complex, which she now

knows is nicknamed "The Tombs."

Ms. Boone said she was held for 26 hours -- 2 hours more than the

24-hour deadline imposed by law for arraigning accused criminals

before a judge.

"I was in shock, terrified, terrified," Ms. Boone said. "It's a police

state. It's the closest I can imagine to being in a concentration

camp. The whole idea is that you're guilty because they say you are."

Ms. Boone, long known for her flamboyance and her voluble nature, said

her arrest had been orchestrated by the Giuliani administration to

bolster its position in its battle with the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

"I think it's more than a coincidence that I was arrested 24 hours

before the 'Sensation' show was to open," she said, referring to the

art show at the center of the Brooklyn controversy. "It's clear that

they're trying to make a statement. It's a Giuliani witch hunt.

They're trying to protect New York from its art."

Sunny Mindel, Mayor Giuliani's chief spokeswoman, referred the matter

to the Police Department. Sgt. Rafael Andalia, a department spokesman,

said officials had no comment on Ms. Boone's allegations. Police

officials said this week that it was standard policy to take anyone

accused of possessing an illegal weapon into custody.

Police officials repeatedly delayed the arraignment and release of the

art dealer on Thursday because they said they were having difficulty

taking Ms. Boone's fingerprints. She said the police took her prints

dozens of times. In the end, prosecutors released the art dealer

without a fingerprint check, a procedure intended to catch repeat

criminals using aliases.

Ms. Boone, who was charged with possessing an exposed rifle and

possessing and disposing of ammunition, faces up to a year in jail and

$2,000 in fines if convicted.

She said she would fight the charges. Her arrest, she said, is an

attack on artists' First Amendment right to express themselves. Ms.

Boone added that she had not known that the bullets offered as

souvenirs from the show by the sculptor, Tom Sachs, were real.

"I'm an art dealer, not an arms dealer," she said.

Ms. Boone dismissed as "lies" statements from the Police Department's

chief spokeswoman, Marilyn Mode, that she kept detectives waiting for

45 minutes in the gallery and pushed them when they tried to arrest

her.

She also dismissed the notion that the bullets and guns were a safety

hazard. "In 1982 I showed a Basquiat painting with a baseball bat in

it. Someone could've taken it off the painting and gone and bludgeoned

someone," she said. "There are all kinds of ramification from this

kind of thinking."

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