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Legacy
Images from The Perfect Moment exhibition and X, Y, and Z portfolios have gone on to show at over 104 exhibitions internationally since 2005. Indeed, the legacy of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work was ultimately helped by the controversy Senator Jesse Helms created around the infamous exhibition. These works and history of attempted censorship of these works during the 1990’s have since influenced federal legislation related to arts funding, the practices of LGBTQ artists from that era and beyond, serving as inspiration for fashion labels, a forthcoming biopic as well as biographical and theoretical accounts and criticisms of The Perfect Moment on visual culture at large.

Despite the attempted censorship of Robert Mapplethorpe’s post-humous "The Perfect Moment" exhibition in 1989, the images therein have been “publicized [and] reproduced” ultimately highlighting the “social and political power” of the photographer’s work in its ability to provoke “new forms of responding to that silence”. His work is currently represented by 12 galleries worldwide, with the largest collection of his works at the Guggenheim in NYC.