National Gallery to bar underage viewers from explicit exhibit

Two rooms with works involving sex, dead animals and Nazi images, to be closed to under-18s

Ottawa — From Thursday's Globe and Mail Published on Wednesday, Apr. 14, 2010 11:10PM EDT Last updated on Thursday, Apr. 15, 2010 4:27PM EDT

The National Gallery of Canada will close two rooms to underage viewers this summer as it plays host to an exhibit that is so controversial for its use of sexuality, dead animals and Nazi imagery that talking points were devised to handle anticipated questions from the public.

Pop Life: Art in a Material World will feature 11 rooms of pop a

rt on loan from the prestigious Tate Modern gallery in London. It includes pieces by Andy Warhol and his artistic successors from the 1980s and 90s who took the genre in directions that often tested the bounds of public morality.

“The larger theme is all about artists that deliberately chose to cross those lines between what’s usually considered fine art – art appropriate for museums – and how artists should critically engage with society,” said Jonathan Shaughnessy, the gallery’s assistant curator.

As a national institution, the gallery receives federal funding. The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has previously balked at paying for art of a sexual nature.

“From what I know and have seen, I have no interest in seeing this exhibition personally,” James Moore, the Minister of Canadian heritage, said in a statement Wednesday. “As a Crown corporation paid for by taxpayers, the National Gallery has a mandate to provide accessible and meaningful art to Canadians of all ages.” Mr. Moore pointed out that costs related specifically to the exhibit will be paid by the gallery and not the government.

Because of sexually explicit content, visitors who wish to enter two of the exhibit halls will be asked to show identification to prove that they are over 18. The gallery has restricted parts of exhibits in the past but officials who were questioned Wednesday could not remember entire rooms being blocked off.

An image of the American actress Brooke Shields as a 10-year-old girl in full makeup and standing naked in a bathtub – part of the original Pop Life show at the Tate – will not be included. It was removed by the British gallery because of complaints that it was child pornography.

Works that remain in the exhibit include those by American artist Jeff Koons, who took photos of himself having sexual relations with onetime Italian politician Ilona Staller. They will also include the creations of British performance artist Cosey Fanni Tutti, who posed for explicit men’s magazines, Italian shock artist Maurizio Cattelan, who manipulates dead stuffed animals, and Polish artist Piotr Uklanski, who has a fascination with film stars in Nazi uniforms.

It will be the first time that many of these works are shown in Canada, said Mr. Shaughnessy. “It’s a chance for the public to see some of these contemporary artists that they might only encounter when they set records at auctions.”

The gallery is well aware of the controversial nature of the exhibit. The talking points, obtained under access to information legislation by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin, say “undoubtedly some taxpayers will question it – an easy thing to do if you take it purely at face value.”

Mounting the exhibit is expected to cost $1.6-million, which the gallery says is at the low end for an exhibit of this nature.

There are no Canadian artists in the exhibit. According to the minutes of the gallery’s board of trustees meeting from Dec. 8, 2009, gallery director Marc Mayer commented on this: “Mayer opined that Canadian artists did not really connect to this (pop) form of art, as they were more serious and less cynical than their American and British counterparts.”