Mapplethorpe Exhibit Ends Tour

BOSTON — A traveling exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs closed Friday, leaving in its wake protests and a conservative attack on the National Endowment for the Arts.

The exhibit combined Mapplethorpe’s explicit homoerotic photographs--the main source of the controversy--with cool, elegant portraits and photographs of flowers. Mapplethorpe helped organize the show shortly before he died of AIDS in 1989.

Boston was the last stop on the exhibit’s seven-city tour. About 103,000 people saw the show during its nine weeks at the Institute of Contemporary Art, about twice the number that visited the museum all last year, said Arthur Cohen, director of marketing.

Controversy over the exhibit forced the national endowment’s new director, John E. Frohnmayer, to institute a requirement that artists sign a statement agreeing to not use NEA funds to make obscene art. Some have turned down grants in protest.