Cultural historian Dennis Barrie, the former director of Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center who has also worked locally with the Rock Hall and the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, revisits his role in the landmark 1990 Mapplethorpe obscenity trial, when the Contemporary Arts Center famously faced criminal charges for exhibiting Mapplethorpe’s artwork. Barbara Tannenbaum, Curator of Photography at the Cleveland Museum of Art, provides a critical curatorial perspective on how museums today navigate provocative works, public funding, and institutional responsibility. Together, Barrie and Tannenbaum discuss the legal, social, and artistic implications of the trial and other controversies they have encountered, while examining how the arts continue to confront, and transcend, questions of censorship and public discourse.