Art and controversy

During my two years of business school, a number of things happened in the outside world that I experienced through a sort of fog. Mayor Giuliani cutting off funding for the Brooklyn Museum of Art primarily due to Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary painting is one of those dim memories. Seeing it today, fifteen years later, it seems almost benign. The piece wasn't smeared with elephant dung as fantastically described at the time, although it was adorned with it like many of his works during that period, plus multiple images of female genitalia that presage a current reality star's butt cover photo - although Ofili's are slightly more anatomical and radically less offensive than I find that cover. Kind of like Madonna's Sex book, which now seems a bore. Having that window to experience the contrast of a current frame of reference vs. a former one is powerful. Has the world become more shocking and/or less obsessed with judging art by seemingly arbitrary moral standards? In my case, I think the cumulative twenty years of adult living, working, striving in NY plus much global travel makes art more necessary yet raises the bar for what compels, moves or surprises me. Somehow Ofili and the New Museum achieved all three of these things.