Art Censorship

Female Nudity, Not in Our Community

After the Raleigh (North Carolina) City Council decided to "preview" some art works that had been booked for exhibit in a city-owned building, the gallery yielded to pressure and booted the artist and her erotic works from the show. The gallery committee had wrestled for several weeks with how best to present the exhibit, which includes images of female nudes interspersed with handwritten text describing an apparent sexual fantasy. The committee had decided to cover internal windows and restrict access to keep children from wandering in. But that proved inadequate after two civic leaders complained to the Raleigh mayor that the exhibit was "pornographic." The artist, Elin O'Hara Slavick, is on the University of North Carolina faculty.