British authorities are expected to prosecute the University of Central England library in Birmingham under the Obscene Publications Act for refusing to destroy a book by the controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe that police seized last October.
The Independent newspaper reported March 4 that police had been alerted by a drug store that developed photographs of prints from the book, Mapplethorpe, taken by a student for a thesis on "Fine Art versus Pornography." Government lawyers advised the police that they had grounds to ask the university to voluntarily destroy it and to ask the publisher, Jonathan Cape, to destroy its remaining stock of the title.
"We will not voluntarily destroy this book," said university Vice-chancellor Peter Knight, who called the volume "an academic work of considerable artistic merit." Marketing Director Susan Sandon told the Independent that Jonathan Cape had no plans to withdraw the title.
Posted March 9, 1998.