Latest news with #ModernArtMuseum
France 24
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
New exhibition explores little-known collaboration between Matisse and daughter Marguerite
France 06:44 Issued on: From the show French painter Henri Matisse was one of the undisputed masters of 20th-century art, particularly known for his incredible use of colour. You may know Matisse's work but you are probably less familiar with his daughter Marguerite. A new exhibition on now at Paris's Modern Art Museum is trying to change that. It's called "Matisse and Marguerite: Through Her Father's Eyes". The co-curator of the show, Charlotte Barat-Mabille, tells us all about their relationship.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
A Very Trumpian Moral Panic Has Struck the Art World
Last November, less than two weeks after Donald Trump was elected president for a second time, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, launched an exhibit featuring some of America's foremost photographers, including Nan Goldin and Sally Mann. 'Diaries of Home' collected works by female and nonbinary artists 'who explore the multilayered concepts of family' and 'challenge documentary photography by pushing it into conceptual, performative, and theatrical realms,' according to the exhibit précis, which noted that it 'features mature themes that may be sensitive for some viewers.' The opening of 'Diaries of Home' was uncontroversial, but come January, a chilling scene unfolded at the museum. Armed with a warrant, Fort Worth police reportedly seized five photos from the exhibit and put them under lock and key—all because a few Republican officials and pearl-clutching Christian activists had taken offense. It's a tableau reminiscent of an autocracy, yet it's happening in America today. Caught in the maw of vague laws, government overreach, and moral panic, art museums have become the latest battleground in an escalating assault on cultural institutions. The photos in question came from Mann's 1990 collection Immediate Family, a groundbreaking series documenting her family's life on their rural Virginia farm. None of the photos in 'Immediate Family' depict sexual conduct. But 13 of them show her children in the nude, and some were included in 'Diaries of Home.' One photograph depicts a magnified portrait of her nude son's torso, covered in what appears to be a melted popsicle; others show her nude daughter leaping onto a picnic table, lying on a bed next to a bedwetting stain, or resting with a flower on her torso. 'Immediate Family' is Mann's most famous collection, in part because of the controversy it generated when it debuted 35 years ago. But these enigmatic, provocative black-and-white images are also rightly celebrated for exploring the complexities of childhood, family, and the American South. The Met and the Whitney hold works from 'Immediate Family' in their collections, and Time named her 'America's best photographer' in 2001, writing that Mann captured a 'combination of spontaneous and carefully arranged moments of childhood repose and revealingly—sometimes unnervingly—imaginative play.… No other collection of family photographs is remotely like it, in both its naked candor and the fervor of its maternal curiosity and care.' A quarter-century later, Texas police officers treat some of the photographs that led to Mann's acclaim as evidence in a criminal investigation. And the images only came to their attention thanks to a controversy manufactured by conservative political activists. In late December, a 'concerned citizen' complained about 'Diaries of Home' to the Tarrant County Citizens Defending Freedom, a Christian MAGA group, as well as to the conservative news site The Dallas Express (which titled its first story on the subject, 'EXCLUSIVE: Is the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth Promoting Child Porn?'). The Express subsequently located one other 'appalled' resident, and eventually got the attention of far-right Tarrant County Judge Tim O'Hare, who told the outlet, 'There are images on display at this museum that are grossly inappropriate at best. They should be taken down immediately and investigated by law enforcement for any and all potential criminal violations. Children must be protected, and decency must prevail.' A couple of other elected Republicans hopped on the outrage bandwagon, as did the D.C.-based Danbury Institute, an extreme anti-abortion group, which launched a petition stating that 'the exhibit as a whole effectively works to normalize pedophilia, child sexual abuse, the LGBTQ lifestyle, and the breakdown of the God-ordained definition of family.' But then O'Hare, whose elected office is similar to that of a city mayor, escalated matters by filing a criminal complaint alleging the nude photographs constituted 'child pornography' and demanding that Fort Worth police remove them from public view. The police did just that, and today they refuse to return the photos as they investigate potential child sexual abuse. Though the confiscation has caught the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, no lawsuits have been filed over it. Though a legal battle is far from certain, it has the potential to reshape how the courts view provocative art—for better or be clear, Mann's photos are not the product of child sexual abuse. Over the three decades since she released 'Immediate Family,' they have never led police to charge her with a crime. Yet they have been ensnared in a legal and cultural debate that pits artistic freedom and the First Amendment against subjective morality and governmental overreach in defining child pornography. The First Amendment does not protect child pornography, an exception that the Supreme Court carved out in the 1982 case New York v. Ferber. But the court did so with a clear intent: to combat the exploitation of children. The justices took care to distinguish child pornography from legitimate artistic works and family photographs. As Mann herself observed in 2015, 'All too often, nudity, even that of children, is mistaken for sexuality, and images are mistaken for actions.' But over the decades, lower court judges have alarmingly expanded the legal definition of child pornography, particularly through the controversial Dost test. Developed by a California district court in 1986 and embraced by most federal courts after Ferber, this vague test allows images to be classified as child pornography based on whether they might be perceived as 'lascivious' by hypothetical deviant viewers. The test's subjectivity and capaciousness can transform innocent images into criminal material when viewed through a pedophilic lens; as one federal court noted in 1999, it could turn even a 'Sears catalog into pornography' in the eyes of a sexual deviant. Indeed, under Dost, federal courts have found fully clothed depictions of children to meet the definition of child pornography. Centering whether a pedophile might find a particular image arousing forces a sexualized view onto nonsexual imagery, effectively doing the very thing it purports to prevent: sexualizing children. This approach not only threatens artistic expression but diminishes the gravity of child abuse. 'Sexual exploitation of a minor, including under the guise of art, should never be tolerated,' O'Hare contends. But conflating sexual exploitation with Mann's textured examinations of childhood reveals a profound misunderstanding of both art and abuse. Notably, Mann's children have grown up to become staunch defenders of their mother's work and their participation in it, with her daughter dismissing the controversy over 'Immediate Family' as 'puritanical idiocy.' The Dost test provides convenient cover for puritanical politicians to suppress artistic expression. Consider O'Hare, who now governs the nation's fifteenth-largest county after campaigning as a Christian culture warrior. The test creates enough legal ambiguity from him to cloak his political theater with the appearance of legitimate criminal law enforcement. Even if the police return the art, Dost dangles like a sword of Damocles over the museum, threatening to fall at any moment based on the subjective judgments or political ambitions of local officials. Mann is an easy scapegoat, but the censorship championed by O'Hare and his allies won't stop at a single artist. Some of the Christian groups backing O'Hare also object to art depicting adult nudity, same-sex relationships, and gender nonconformity. By insisting public art should uphold biblical 'moral standards' rather than showcase 'radical perversion,' they reveal their ignorance of art's actual content or context. One wonders if they will soon demand fig leaves for Michelangelo's David, or perhaps a tasteful sweater vest for Botticelli's Venus. The Mann controversy reflects the convergence of rooted trends and new developments. Artists and curators in recent years have already been self-censoring work involving children, at times removing it from view in anticipation that it might be misconstrued and lead to prosecution for crimes that carry draconian penalties. More frequently, museums are quietly excluding art from exhibitions from the jump. Leading curators, for example, have deliberately left out Robert Mapplethorpe's portraits of children from his 1990 collection 'A Perfect Moment' from their exhibitions and websites in retrospectives on his work. These long-term cultural currents now collide with a new administration in Washington. President Trump's return to the White House has emboldened Christian nationalists to advocate for state censorship and Victorian-era prudery. Efforts to revive the Comstock Act—a once obscure anti-obscenity statute that many in the anti-abortion movement hope to weaponize against medication abortion and birth control—represent the vanguard of this revanchism. But this cultural counterrevolution has broader aims beyond reproductive rights, seeking to narrow representation of race, gender, and sexuality in public spaces, museums, and educational institutions. One crucial buffer protecting Mann's work has been prosecutorial discretion, a long-standing common law tradition that explains why one doesn't usually hear about museum raids. This guardrail has been fraying in the MAGA era, and the prosecutors in Trump's current administration show increasing willingness to bulldoze through established norms. Ed Martin, the Trump-appointed acting U.S. attorney in D.C., has taken the unprecedented step of seeking a grand jury investigation into Senator Chuck Schumer over his criticism of the Supreme Court—signaling how once-unthinkable prosecutorial overreach might soon extend to cultural institutions. We now face the very real possibility that federal child pornography laws could be exploited by prosecutors advancing the president's personal vendettas and his base's theocratic preoccupations. This perilous moment requires both legal reform and cultural reflection. Most crucially, the Supreme Court must offer guidance on what constitutes a 'lascivious' image and what differentiates such an image from constitutionally protected artistic depictions of children, clothed or otherwise. This definition should foreground the actual depiction of the child in a photograph, not the potential reaction of the photographer or a consumer. This change will require rolling back the judicially created Dost test and existing lower court precedent that permits interpretation of images through the voyeuristic gaze of a pedophile. In recent years, the Supreme Court has declined to hear multiple cases that could have curtailed or eliminated the Dost test, devoting its attention to a mix of high-profile cases advancing the goals of the conservative legal movement and technical ones lacking public salience. Ultimately, debates over controversial art belong not in courts but in the cultural sphere—in galleries, academic journals, and public discourse. Mann's art has always had its thoughtful detractors, some of whom view 'Immediate Family' as an ethically dubious spectacle. But they have defended its place in museums and the artistic canon, engaging in the nuanced dialogue that sustains and enriches art criticism. Writing for The New Republic in 2015, Cara Parks observed that Mann's photography can simultaneously be 'arrestingly beautiful' and 'troubling.' Like much good art, it is precisely this unresolved tension—the inability to neatly categorize Mann's work, the coexistence of conflicting narratives—that gives it power and cultural significance. It's the religious crusaders and political opportunists we should truly fear—those who seek to weaponize state power to enforce their own moral preferences. They increasingly have the ear of elected Republicans in Washington and across the country as they seek to impose a singular vision on a pluralistic society. The seizure of Mann's photographs endangers much more than one artist's legacy or one museum's autonomy; it's a threat to First Amendment protections and to important art that dares to challenge us.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Honolulu Museum of Art CEO departing for Texas
COURTESY HOMA Halona Norton-Westbrook, director and CEO of the Honolulu Museum of Art, is departing after five years in the position. She has been named the new director of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. COURTESY HOMA Halona Norton-Westbrook, director and CEO of the Honolulu Museum of Art, is departing after five years in the position. She has been named the new director of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. The Honolulu Museum of Art's director and CEO, Halona Norton-Westbrook, is departing after five years in the position. Norton-Westbrook has been named the new director of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, starting July 1, according to a news release from the museum. She has led HoMA since January 2020, and will remain through May 16. A search is underway for her replacement by the board of trustees, with the assistance of a professional search firm. 'Halona Norton-Westbrook's steadfast leadership has guided the Honolulu Museum of Art through a period of positive transformational change, ' said Mike Watanabe, HoMA's board chair, in a news release. 'Under her guidance, HoMA has recruited top talent to key positions, reconceptualized the Museum's teaching curriculum and built deeper connections through partnerships, programs and exhibitions that reflect diverse perspectives. We look forward to building on these many achievements to serve the greater Honolulu community, who are the inspiration behind all of our efforts.' During her five-year tenure, Norton-Westbrook led HoMA through a successful reaccreditation process from the American Alliance of Museums and created the museum's first comprehensive strategic plan. She also spearheaded the $4 million restoration and expansion project of HoMA's historic Art School. Don 't miss out on what 's happening ! Stay in touch with breaking news, as it happens, conveniently in your email inbox. It 's FREE ! Email 28141 Sign Up By clicking to sign up, you agree to Star-Advertiser 's and Google 's and. This form is protected by reCAPTCHA. Museum attendance increased 70 % from pre-pandemic numbers, despite declining visitations worldwide, and museum engagement grew significantly through art school classes and activities, tours and experiences. Recent initiatives include a pilot program promoting brain health in an art-making setting in partnership with the Brain Health Applied Research Institute, and Art for Life, a program engaging adults ages 55 and older in artistic creation. HoMA has also been a venue for the, the state's largest thematic exhibition of contemporary art, since its debut. The triennial, which features exhibits across Oahu, Maui and Hawaii island, continues through May 4. 'Leading the Honolulu Museum of Art for the past five years has been a dream and an honor, ' said Norton-Westbrook in a statement. 'As a nearly 100-year-old institution, there are countless individuals who have played a role in the Honolulu Museum of Art's legacy. I'm thankful to have been part of a brilliant team of museum professionals and volunteers who continue to evaluate and evolve how a 21st-century museum can best serve its community. I'm proud of all that we have accomplished together to provide inclusive and meaningful experiences for our visitors.' 5 Comments By participating in online discussions you acknowledge that you have agreed to the. An insightful discussion of ideas and viewpoints is encouraged, but comments must be civil and in good taste, with no personal attacks. If your comments are inappropriate, you may be banned from posting. Report comments if you believe they do not follow our. Having trouble with comments ? .
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Fort Worth police seize photographs of nude children from museum, ACLU claims First Amendment violation
The Brief The Fort Worth Police Department removed photographs from the Modern Art Museum as part of an investigation. The artist took the photos in the early 90s and the collection has been debuted in more than a dozen shows across the country since. The exhibition was from November 17, 2024, through February 2, 2025. FORT WORTH, Texas - In November, the Fort Worth Police Department removed photographs at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth from an exhibition by the artist Sally Mann in what the ACLU of Texas calls a violation of the First Amendment. Three civil liberty organizations sent a letter on Wednesday, demanding the police department "end its unconstitutional censorship and seizure of several pieces of art that were on display." The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth began hosting an exhibition in November called"Diaries from Home," featuring works that "explore the multilayered concepts of family, community, and home." Included in the collection were photos from Sally Mann's 1990 collection "Immediate Family." Mann's collection featured an "intimate and candid look at her family's rural life," the ACLU said in a news release. Of the 65 photos in Mann's "Immediate Family," 13 showed her children in the nude. The selection of nude photos displayed in the Modern reportedly included depictions of Mann's daughter jumping onto a picnic table in a ballet pose, Mann's daughter lying in bed with a stain from a nighttime accident, and Mann's son with a melted popsicle running down his body. "Immediate Family" was controversial even at its debut decades ago, but has been showcased in more than a dozen art galleries across the world, including the National Gallery of Art. Fort Worth police seized the few pieces of artwork last month as part of an investigation. The rest of the collection was on display at the museum until the end of the exhibit, through February 2, 2025. What they're saying Some local officials publicly condemned the images. One of the officials, Tarrant County Judge Tim O'Hare, posted on X saying, "The images of children reported in the media at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth are deeply disturbing. Sexual exploitation of a minor, including under the guise of 'art,' should never be tolerated. I have full confidence in law enforcement to thoroughly investigate this matter and take appropriate action. I will always be committed to protecting the most vulnerable members of society, our children." After the comments were made, the Fort Worth Police Department seized several of Mann's portraits from the exhibit as part of a criminal investigation into potential child abuse. On Wednesday, after the ACLU sent a news release, FOX 4 News asked Fort Worth Police for a statement on the seizure of the photographs. The Public Relations Team responded with, "This is still an ongoing investigation. We don't have any new information to release." The other side According to the ACLU, all of Mann's children, as adults, continued to support the collection and their mother and have never once suggested they were abused. "It's shameful that government officials would use the criminal legal process to censor art and expression," said Adriana Piñon, legal director of the ACLU of Texas. "This is a clear violation of the First Amendment and of the guardrails against abuse of the criminal justice system. Artistic expression should not be subject to the whim and punishment of government officials' personal taste." "Anyone who's ever taken a photo of their child or grandchild taking a bath understands that not all photographs of child nudity are malicious, let alone child abuse," said Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at FIRE. "The seizure of Mann's works is an egregious abuse of power that dishonestly conflates artistic expression with sexual exploitation." "Publicity stunts like this one — in which artworks that have been shown and discussed for over 30 years are suddenly the focus of an unfounded 'investigation' — do nothing to protect victims of child abuse, and serve only to chill the creative expressions of artists and cultural institutions by subjecting them to the threat of political prosecution and the unconstitutional seizure of artwork," said Elizabeth Larison, director of NCAC's Arts and Culture Advocacy Program. The photographs remain in a police storage facility, according to reports from the ACLU. Sally Mann is a renowned photographer with accolades from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. As she describes this specific group of photographs, "I photographed their triumphs, confusion, harmony and isolation, as well as the hardships that tend to befall children — bruises, vomit, bloody noses, wet beds — all of it." The photos under investigation are entitled to full First Amendment protection, according to the ACLU. "The works are not the product of child abuse, and they are neither intended nor designed to excite lust in the viewer. They do what much art does — convey ideas and invite viewers to reflect on the human experience," the news release states. "Both the creation and dissemination of photographs are 'inherently expressive' acts protected by the First Amendment. The 'First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content,' except in a few 'well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech,' such as defamation, incitement, obscenity, and child pornography. No such exception applies to Mann's photographs." The ACLU says the works do not meet the legal definition of "obscenity." "This should be common sense to anyone familiar with the iconic "Napalm Girl" photograph, National Geographic documentaries, or even major Hollywood films like the 1978 version of "Superman," the ACLU states. In Miller v. California, the Supreme Court adopted a three-part test for determining whether expression is legally obscene. A work may be banned as "obscene" only if "taken, as a whole," the "average person, applying contemporary community standards" would consider it to "appeal to the prurient interest"; it depicts or describes "sexual conduct" in a "patently offensive" manner; and it lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Works must meet all three prongs of this test to fall outside the First Amendment's protection. The Source Information in this article is from a news release sent to FOX 4 News by the Texas ACLU, a post by Tarrant County judge Tim O'Hare and the Fort Worth Police Department.
