If you find that this summer you cannot possibly make it to Florence or Rome, where you can bask in the Neo-classicism of Raphael and marvel at the heroic Mannerism of Michelangelo; and that you also cannot get to Provincetown, where you can luxuriate in the many shops’ boy-crazy images, kitsch, and tchotchkes, you may want to take a trip to the Guggenheim Museum, where the show “Robert Mapplethorpe and the Classical Tradition” has taken over three floors of Frank Lloyd Wright’s rotunda.

You might not recall the stylishly sleek homoerotic photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989). Think of poised, sculpted male nudes, occasionally performing sexual acts, in place of William Wegman’s dogs. But you might recall the political uproar caused by his 1990 retrospective at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, when Senator Helms objected to NEA dollars being spent on an exhibition that some citizens might find offensive.

The truth of the matter is, of course, a fact that was overlooked by Mr. Helms and his homophobic posse. Mapplethorpe’s photographs are objectionable not because they depict anal penetration (images by Watteau can be just as racy); they are objectionable because, though harmless in and of themselves, they are, more often than not, aesthetically lame.

The Guggenheim show is rather tame, but still lame. There are only a handful of photographs of penises and of leather-clad men in S&M gear, and there are no images of penetration. The show offers a PG-13 version of the artist, but it still gives us some of his classic classicism-lite meets eroticism-lite photography.

The exhibition, comprising 120 works, attempts to repackage Mapplethorpe’s chic fashion photography as a contemporary neoclassic link in the chain that goes back to Jacques Louis David, Michelangelo, and Hellenistic sculpture. The show pairs a few pieces of Neo-classical sculpture and Dutch Mannerist prints, mostly by Jan Saenredam, Jan Harmensz Muller, Jacob Matham, and Hendrick Goltzius, with Mapplethorpe’s slickly contrived black and white photographs (images of figures in vaguely similar poses to those in the other artworks). The exhibition waves the Mannerist flag more than that of Neo-classicism; but, really, who’s counting?

The exhibition, regardless of Mapplethorpe’s self-deluded connection to the art of the past, is a scholarly farce. A farce made more evident when you compare the engravings and sculptures to the photographs, and discover that Mapplethorpe does not have the power and personal vision to transform his subjects into art.

The curators of the show appear to disregard the fact that a drawn or sculpted torso, made by an artist in the studio, has nothing whatsoever in common with one sculpted in the gym. Photographs become art (become linked with tradition) not because of their lofty pretensions or their subjects’ “neoclassical” poses but through the artist’s personal engagement with that tradition. And no amount of art historical alchemy can change that.

Until August 24 (1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, 212-423-3500).