Showcase Controversy
The Student Art Guild recently created a surprising stir on campus by displaying an unclothed manikin of a child in an evolving installation in a hallway showcase. An anonymous complaint from outside the School of Fine Arts took offense at this display of child nudity.
What do you think?
read more about the showcase on
Art Guild's blog here:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/mccu0154/artguild/2007/12/display_case_excitement.html
Other recent controversy is brewing in the Tweed Museum this week...
Neal Petersen's MFA show was shut down due to inclusion of explicit sexual imagery.
That show has now been reopened, coincidentally around the same time that the Duluth News Tribune came to report on it. That show is up in the student gallery until Sunday. See for yourself what all the fuss is about!
some links:
AIGA
Art, Censorship and Courage
by David Rhodes May 23, 2006
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/art-censorship-and-courage
National Coalition Against Censorship
http://www.ncac.org/art/
Comments
I don't agree with the way the Tweed handled Neal Petersen's show. He just wanted to show his work and invoke discussion. It isn't his responsibility to keep kids from seeing his art, it's the museum's. If they thought his show had explicit content and was inappropriate then, I don't think they should have let him put it up in the first place. I think it's funny that they don't think that covering up someone's art is censoring it. How is that not censorship? I also disagree with the complaint about an unclothed "child" manikin in the display case. The Art Guild was not trying to offend anyone with it and probably didn't even realize someone might find it offensive.
Posted by: Michelle Miller | December 17, 2007 07:53 PM