Arthur Cohen, the ICA's marketing director, said the only piece of Kelley's art that people might consider offensive was a cartoonish drawing of a man defecating. Kelley's drawings also include depictions of disembodied sexual organs.
Ross said Kelley's work is part of several museums' permanent collections, including the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
The NEA controversy began last year when Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and other conservatives in Congress objected to NEA funding of works they considered obscene.
Helms singled out the Mapplethorpe exhibit, "The Perfect Moment," for its sexually graphic photographs and nude children.
Last week, a House compromise that would have allowed the NEA to award grants without content restrictions was derailed by the Senate Appropriations Committee, which reinstituted an anti-obscenity pledge that artists must sign before they receive grant money.
The Kelley exhibit is scheduled to be shown in Boston in October 1992 and tour other museums across the nation and in Europe.