08.06.2007
Nudity causes stir in Winston gallery
A few weeks ago, Stewart Gerard walked into the Downtown Arts District Association’s Community Center, where his exhibit of 24 photographs was showing.
He saw only 22.
"My first thought was, ‘Oh, someone was here and it sold and they couldn’t wait for the show to be over to take it home,’‘ he said.
Then he found the missing photographs — the only two nude photographs in the show — in a closet. One of the photographs showed two nude women, and the other showed two nude men shot from the front in an art studio.
They had been taken down after the building’s owner received a call from an adult who objected to having children see the art.
Those two missing nudes, which have been put in the closet several more times since, have provoked a larger discussion about standards for displaying potentially controversial art in a center that serves as the focus for the entire district.
Amy Garland, co-owner of 5ive and 40rty gallery and the director of the DADA Community Center, said that she has been researching the issue and that DADA members need to have a discussion about guidelines for shows at the center.
DADA is a group of artists, business owners and other people who want to support the arts community around Sixth and Trade streets.
“The fact that a couple of people were offended by full frontal nudity from men is an issue,’‘ said Garland, who also does public relations work for the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art.
Wake Forest University, the N.C. School of the Arts and many other galleries have guidelines for how to handle potentially controversial work.
“People are going to throw that censorship word around but sometimes we can’t just put it out there for people,’‘ Garland said.
DADA needs to behave more like a business, she said, and consider the audience that comes to the community center. The organization needs to research if grant money could be affected by the sort of art it shows, she said. It might also need to appoint a media spokesperson.
“I’m not showing nudes in my gallery,’‘ she said. “We live in the Bible Belt. We’re in the South.”
Gerard, who is spending the summer in town, graduated from West Forsyth High School and will attend Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, Germany this fall.
He wonders if such attitudes belong in a district that professes to be devoted to the arts. He put his work back up after he found it in the closet, but he has come back to the center and found the photos in the closet six or seven times.
“It’s not like it’s this revolving door of sex and promiscuity,’‘ he said of his work. “It’s not Robert Mapplethorpe.”
Mapplethorpe was a photographer known for his sexually explicit works.
Mike Coe, who owns the building that houses the community center and is informally known as the Mayor of Trade Street for his support of the district, said that he took the photographs down once.
That was after he got a call from someone who had brought children to the gallery and who was offended by the photos. Since then, he said he has received two other calls, both about bringing children to the gallery.
Coe said he wishes now that he had not taken the photos down.
“I just think I was panicking,’‘ he said.
He was afraid that the complaint would reflect poorly on DADA, and possibly discourage people from coming to the district.
“Art is art whether it’s naked or live or photographed and I had no problem with it until I started getting some heat,’‘ Coe said.
He doesn’t know who put the photographs in the closet the other times, he said, but there are about 30 keys to the center floating around the city. He intended to bring the calls to DADA’s attention so that members could decide what they wanted to do about showing controversial art in the center.
He expected that the works would be put back up as soon as a sign warning about controversial content was placed in the window.
Jennifer Wynn O’Kelly, an artist and the former interim director of the center, said that she booked Gerard’s show and that much of what has happened can be put down to a misunderstanding.
“It’s not a case of censorship,’‘ she said. “It’s a case of poor communication.”
She had put up a notice in the window alerting visitors to potentially controversial subject matter, she said. When the windows were cleaned at some point, all of the posters and notices were taken down without her realizing it.
If Coe had told her about the complaints, she said, she would have known to go put the sign back up.
She is not in favor of establishing any new guidelines for the center, she said or of prohibiting any specific subject matter.
“I think the guidelines that we have are the guidelines that we need but they need to be codified—written in one document,’‘ she said.
Millicent Greason, the owner of Urban Artware and a DADA member, said that she’s against anything that approaches censorship.
“But as a compromise, having a small card in the door that says, ‘You may see something inappropriate,’ is OK,’‘ she said.
Laurie Russell, a DADA member who shows her work in the district, said that she understands not wanting to offend people. When she had a controversial show recently, she said that she stood outside and caught parents as they entered with children and advised that they might want to look at the show first before they brought in their children.
She is fine with posting a sign advising people that some of the material is controversial, but like Greason, she would be reluctant to go much beyond that.
“I think the artist should be free to do whatever,’‘ she said. “I don’t think you should take the artist’s voice away.”