ART

Benefit Called Off: The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has canceled an AIDS fund-raiser that was to coincide with the publication of a new book of sexually explicit photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe. The event was to feature a slide show of pictures from the book, but museum officials opted out after becoming concerned that the book was “likely to offend a lot of people.” The president of the Mapplethorpe Foundation in New York called the decision “ridiculous and not very enlightened.” Meanwhile, Harrods, the upmarket department store in London, has stopped selling “Mapplethorpe” following complaints by an unspecified number of customers. Mapplethorpe, an avant-garde New York photographer whose work features homosexual and sadomasochistic themes, died March 9, 1989, at age 42.