The first exit poll ever conducted at a potentially offensive art exhibit suggests people who would be offended by such displays tend to avoid them and those who do attend end up finding beauty where others see only controversy.

“We found scant evidence in support of censoring potentially offensive art exhibits,� said David Halle, a UCLA sociologist who conducted the survey. “The current system — whereby museums choose what they want to display — appears to work pretty well.�

Halle, the director of UCLA LeRoy Neiman Center for the Study of American Society and Culture at UCLA, reveals his findings in the new book “Crossroads: Art and Religion in American Life� (New Press). He also discusses his findings in a chapter in the forthcoming book “Unsettling ‘Sensation’: Arts-Policy Lessons From the Brooklyn Museum of Art Controversy� (Rutgers University Press).

Halle directed a team of interviewers who questioned 860 museum-goers on their way out of “Sensation,� a Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibit that drew fire from New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1999. Giuliani argued that a piece in the show, a portrait of the Virgin Mary incorporating elephant dung, was “really aggressively anti-religious� and offensive to Catholics.

The piece’s artist, Chris Ofili, denied any intent to shock or offend, arguing that dung in some African cultures symbolizes respect and fertility. But Giuliani withheld city funding for the museum and threatened to terminate its lease. The museum eventually succeeded in obtaining a temporary injunction to restore the funds, but Giuliani has since assembled a “decency panel� to review future expenditures of city funds toward art for public display.

Despite Giuliani’s concerns, Halle found that only 16.2 percent of the people who saw “Sensations� were Catholics and only 6 percent reported belonging to Giuliani’s political party (Republican). The majority of attendees were Democrats and more than a third reported having no religious affiliation at all, which is roughly three times the rate found in previous polls of the American public.

“It may well be that the extensive publicity associated with Ofili’s work caused those who might have been offended to stay away,� Halle said. “But our findings suggest the sound logic underlying the whole principle of having these works displayed in bounded institutions to which people must make a special effort to visit. Those who are likely to be offended do not come. Those who come are not likely to be offended. There’s a lot of self-selection that goes on.�

Asked what they thought of the exhibit, the vast majority (74 percent) of visitors expressed positive to very positive views, variously describing “Sensation� in its entirety as “thought-provoking,� “fascinating� and “a little too pretty,� and Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary� as “beautiful,� “interesting� and “great.�

“Given the strength of Giuliani’s opposition, the extent to which people liked the show was surprising,� Halle said.

Of the 6.2 percent who were negative, almost none reported being offended by Ofili’s piece. Instead, they expressed concern about two other pieces in the exhibit that had neither stirred Giuliani’s ire nor attracted media attention. They were a sculptural commentary on genetic engineering and cloning consisting of life-sized and lifelike mannequins of nude girls grotesquely joined together, and a sculptural commentary on carnivorous appetites consisting of a sliced, preserved pig, suspended on a motorized track so the halves moved back and forward. “Disgusting and pornographic� was how one viewer described the first. About the second, another asked, “What does this have to do with art?�

Tellingly, however, many visitors needed a photograph to help them recall those works. Meanwhile, they had much less trouble recalling Ofili’s piece.

“Unless someone draws attention to a controversial piece, people not only failed to get riled by it, they don’t remember it,� Halle said. “Someone has to make a huge fuss for a specific piece of art to lodge in the public consciousness.�

Still, even after visitors had their memories jogged, almost no one thought the works should be censored.

Halle’s findings are consistent with a recent nationwide poll that found Democrats and Republicans alike are clearly against government attempts to regulate what is exhibited in museums, libraries or theaters. Also revealed in “Crossroads,� a University of Connecticut phone survey of 1,005 adults found that 68 percent thought that the government should not be able to “ban art in public museums that contains content that might be offensive to others.�

Even though Republican lawmakers have lead the decade-long charge against public funding for controversial art exhibitions, the survey found Republicans were even less likely than Democrats to “strongly agree� or “mildly agree� that the government should ban such art. Meanwhile, 60 percent of all surveyed favored (strongly or mildly) government support of the arts.

“Contemporary artists can legitimately attempt to push the boundaries of what is morally, aesthetically and politically acceptable,� Halle said. “This study suggests that the center of gravity of public opinion — both the opinion of those who attend such a show and the opinion of the American public on the relevant issues — point to sensible and reasonable ways of handling such controversies.�

Halle, who splits his time between Los Angeles and New York, specializes in urban, cultural and political sociology. His other books include “Inside Culture: Art and Class in the American Home� (University Press, 1984). He is a member of the arts subcommittee of the prestigious Social Science Research Council. His research was funded by the Luce Foundation.