The faculty of Brooklyn College issued a resolution yesterday deploring the Department of Parks and Recreation’s decision to close an exhibition of students’ artwork in a World War II memorial in Cadman Plaza.

The resolution was also directed to the college’s administration, which on Monday sent trucks to remove several of the pieces of artwork, and to Mayor Bloomberg. The resolution was passed 58 votes to 10, according to a statement issued by one artist involved. It stated, in part: “We deplore this act of censorship of artwork on the part of the Parks Department, and we affirm students’ rights to be involved in any decisions or actions related to their art work.”

More than a resolution is expected to come out of the controversy that began Thursday, when the Brooklyn Parks Commissioner, Julius Spiegel, closed the exhibit and changed the locks on the space, explaining that not all the artwork was appropriate for families to view. A noted civil rights attorney, Norman Siegel, said he would file a federal lawsuit against the city and the college’s administration, for its role in assisting in the removal. He said the lawsuit will be filed in Brooklyn later this week or next week.

The pieces include a sculpture of a penis, and one that includes words describing an imaginary homosexual encounter involving someone named Dick Cheney.

“The government is not the appropriate body to judge the value of art,” Mr. Siegel, a graduate of Brooklyn College, said in an interview. The government should not, as it was doing here, use its power to impose an artistic orthodoxy in city of New York … a town which has a rich history of commitment to artistic expression.”

Mr. Siegel noted that the lawsuit would go forward regardless of whether the students, who are enrolled in a graduate program, found a suitable place to display their work in a private space in DUMBO or on campus, both of which have been considered as possibilities.

Yesterday, students whose artwork had been exhibited expressed concern that their works may have been damaged in the move, but said the controversy has drummed up interest in their work and will likely lead to a wider audience that returns to see the exhibit when a new space is found.

“It is a blessing in disguise,” one of the artists whose work was displayed, Augusto Marin, said in a telephone interview. “I knew it from the beginning when the told me that they shut it down. … It has created a response, and every artist likes a response to his work. I feel that has fueled us.”

Mr. Marin, one of 18 graduate students to exhibit work in the show, had two installations in the gallery space at the war memorial. One was a seven-foot tall folding chair. The second involved polyurethane statues of a paisa hand, a fish, and a pig’s heart, he said.

He said that prior to the exhibit’s closing an art dealer had expressed interested in either showing or purchasing his work. Although the artwork has been transported back to the nearby Brooklyn College campus from Cadman Plaza, some artists said they have not been reunited with their creations.

I’m here right now,” one of the artists, Zoe Cohen, said by telephone from campus. Referring to the works of art, she said: “I’m looking out the window. They could be here in any one of these buildings.”

Ms. Cohen said she hopes her work soon returns to a gallery space. The piece she had exhibited in the war memorial included images of seven fruits identified in Deuteronomy, she said.

“The only thing I ever hoped for my artwork is just that it reaches a diverse audience of people who may be touched and moved by it and those who may not be,” she said.