(Source)
© April 10, 2008
IF ONLY I hadn’t watched “The Godfather” last Saturday.
I keep replaying that scene where the Corleones are ready to make a move on Vegas and the spineless son, Fredo, stupidly sides with casino owner Moe Greene.
It went something like, “Freddie, you’re my older brother. I love you.” Michael hisses the minute Moe leaves. “But don’t ever take sides with anybody against the family again.”
Fredo nods dumbly. But we all know how that turns out.
Nevertheless, here I am, taking sides against my employer.
I feel like Fredo. In a skirt.
This is about the great naked debate, of course. The one that involves The Virginian-Pilot, its student art show and two talented young artists who were denied top prizes because the subjects of their works were portrayed au naturel.
Yes, Michelangelo spins in his grave.
First, some history. This year was the 36th annual Virginian-Pilot Student Gallery. Hundreds of budding young artists from the area submitted two works each for judging. The lucky finalists saw their pieces hung in the Chrysler Museum of Art and were eligible for cash prizes.
When the judge of the show, the director of an art museum at the College of William and Mary, selected a painting by 17-year-old Nancy “Beth” Reid of Portsmouth for first prize, the organizers from The Pilot gulped.
It wasn’t just that Reid had submitted a painting of a nude, a colorful rendering of a teenage girl in the buff. This was a self-portrait. It said so right on the label.
The organizers checked with the publisher.
No paintings of unclad minors, he said.
I’m not just buttering up the boss of my family when I say Bruce Bradley’s heartburn was understandable.
“The key point was that this is a minor,” Bradley reiterated Wednesday.
We in the news business go to great lengths to shield minors. Slapping a blue ribbon on a picture of a naked high school senior, perhaps reprinting the work in the paper and using it in a slide show, goes against our protective instincts.
The first judge departed and a second was summoned.
Enter Scott Howe, director of education and public programs at the Chrysler. He studied the works and selected a sculpture of a nude pregnant torso as best in the show.
The representatives of the paper groaned. No nudes, they said.
“I was told I wasn’t allowed to honor either girl in any way,” Howe said.
If that was the case, Howe said he told the organizers, they should remove those off-limit items from the judging. They refused. So he, too, walked out.
This second decision is more puzzling than the first.
The work was not a self-portrait. It shows a swollen belly and two large bosoms. Its companion piece is a baby in a nest. The artist, Jasmine Childs of Chesapeake, told me she was trying to show the relationship between mother and child.
Look, the newspaper runs the show. The newspaper makes the rules. If nudes were unwelcome, they should have been banned from the start. They weren’t excluded and nudes were entered in previous shows, so it seems unfair to penalize these talented artists.
Ultimately, two Pilot staffers judged the show. The nudes remain on display but are ribbonless.
There is an upside to this embarrassing ordeal. Private sources raised enough money to give Reid and Childs cash awards. Foot traffic at the Chrysler is up and the girls have become overnight sensations in the local art world.
“I’m not upset at all,” Childs said when I reached her Tuesday. “I’ve been getting a lot of support.”
Deservedly so.
And The Pilot?
Let’s just say a family portrait of us right now would have to include some egg on our faces.
Expose Yourself to Art
The Hampton Roads, Va., Virginian-Pilot newspaper held its 36th annual “Student Gallery”, an art contest for area students. The judges included the director of the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary, and a director from the Chrysler Museum of Art. But their winning choice was rejected by the newspaper as “inappropriate” – the 17-year-old girl who painted the portrait posed for it herself – without clothing. “There’s nothing showing!” complained a Chrysler Museum official, but the newspaper liaison sniffed the paper is “thinking about the audience, and all the kids and the younger siblings who will see these pieces.” The painting did not violate the rules of the contest. OK, so on to the second choice of the judges, a sculpture. It was rejected by the newspaper too, for the same reason. Two “judges” from the newspaper awarded the $1,000 first prize to a third student. Chrysler Museum officials were so bothered by the rejection that they raised $1,000 to give to the judges’ first choice, Nancy “Beth” Reid, a senior at Churchland High School in Portsmouth. Her painting is still hanging at the Chrysler. (Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot) …The ultimate victory: the Pilot had to report on its staff’s own stupidity.
This story reminded me of another where some American magistrate used the State’s money in order to have statues of naked women covered. If people in the USA are so sensitive about nudity when it’s so clearly art, I can understand them being so judgemental about it when it’s in games~
Of course, it makes me wonder if any and all museums in the USA are forbidden to children in order to “shield minors” and to “(think) about the audience, and all the kids and the younger siblings who will see these pieces” since, you know, there are a lot of nudity in paintings and sculptures of past civilizations. :roll: