The defence called experts from the University of California-Berkeley, Mills College, the San Francisco Museum of Art and the San Francisco Art Institute, art historians Walter Horn and Catherine Caldwell, and Alan Watts, a respected scholar and philosopher of Eastern religion. The trial ran from June 23 to July 2, 1964. Should the sculptures be found obscene, California Penal Code 312 provided for their destruction. The police charged Elder with offering lewd objects for sale. There were 26 of Boise’s sculptures in the gallery’s show, including a number of life-size female nudes, busts and torsos, musical instruments, and 12 small pieces made from scrap metal (about 18 inches high) depicting sexual positions from the Kama Sutra. In March 1964 San Francisco police raided Muldoon Elder’s Vorpal Gallery on North Beach and seized 11 sculptures by Ron Boise (1931-1966), an artist and one of writer Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters.
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