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Fort Worth police confirm seizure of Sally Mann photos from museum, a move rarely seen nationally

image of a sign for museum exhibition diaries of home
Marcheta Fornoff
/
KERA
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth closed its "Diaries of Home" exhibition Feb. 2. Four images from the show were removed after public officials and a news site questioned whether they were child pornography.

In a rare move, photos from an exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth were taken into police custody.

The four photos, by artist Sally Mann, were taken down from the show Diaries of Home weeks ago. But neither police nor museum officials would say who had them until last week, when Fort Worth police confirmed they were being held in a police storage facility.

The exhibition closed Sunday, as scheduled. What’s next for the photographs is not clear. The images show Mann’s children in the nude. In one, her naked daughter is jumping on a picnic table. In another, popsicle drips streak down her son’s torso and genitals.

The controversy began when The Dallas Express, a conservative website, questioned whether the museum violated pornography laws by displaying the photos and published comments attributed to public officials who objected to the images.

Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare was one of the officials quoted in The Dallas Express.

"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,” O’Hare posted on X.

“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."

O’Hare could not be reached over the weekend. But many others feel similarly. The Danbury Institute, a Christian nonprofit based in Washington D.C. circulated a petition calling for the museum to remove the images, which they described as disturbing and inappropriate.

“A museum plaque shockingly describes the collection as showcasing ‘children naked, moody, and in suggestive situations’ to ‘evoke an edgy, dark side of childhood.’ This characterization is morally unacceptable, and 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,” the petition said in part.

Museum officials declined to discuss the matter and Mann and her gallery did not respond to requests for comment. No charges have been filed in the case.

But First Amendment advocates called the situation unusual.

“I think it's been understood that works that are significant enough artistically to be displayed in museums would not be seized,” said Amy Adler, professor at New York University School of Law. “It’s extremely rare.”

Past controversy

The controversy around Mann is not new. In the last 10 years, Mann’s work has been shown at several prominent institutions, such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Art, Houston.

But when her work traveled to the Milwaukee Art Museum back in 1991, some residents who listened to evangelical broadcaster Rev. Vic Eliason’s radio program complained that Mann’s work violated child pornography laws.

The Milwaukee Police Department reviewed the complaints before passing them along to the county attorney, who decided not to pursue charges against the artist or museum, according to reporting from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Some of those images, which are now more than 30 years old, were also shown in Fort Worth where Mann had more than 20 photos featured in the group exhibition.

“Sally Mann's artwork has been heavily shown and published and discussed for over 30 to 40 years,” said Elizabeth Larison, from the National Coalition Against Censorship. “These are not new works and they have been looked at and questioned before and no charges have been filed that we're aware of.”

Mapplethorpe in Cincinnati

The first time a museum and its director faced criminal charges over an exhibition was back in 1990, when Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center showed 175 photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. Seven photos were at the heart of the case, including five which featured gay men in sexual poses, which led to obscenity charges.

First Amendment attorney H. Louis Sirkin defended the arts center in that case. He noted that, unlike in Fort Worth, the police took video of the exhibition but did not seize work from the walls.

Art has a First Amendment protection, and Sirkin described the removal as an example of a legal concept called prior restraint because the works were taken down before a hearing had determined whether they were unlawful.

“It's not like a drug bust where you go ahead and you seize the drugs and you take them because the drugs themselves have no constitutional protection,” said Sirkin.

The Cincinnati museum faced separate charges for “misuse of a minor in nudity-oriented material” for two Mapplethorpe photos that showed children who were either partially or fully nude. In one photo, a young boy sits on the back of a couch. In the other, a toddler sits on the bench and her dress partially exposes her genitals. In both cases, the parents defended the photos.

The museum and its director were found not guilty of all charges.

In a separate incident, in 1988 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, three city aldermen entered an art exhibition and took down a satirical painting by a student that showed Harold Washington, the city’s recently deceased first Black mayor, in lingerie. Police accompanied the aldermen and briefly took the painting into their custody. The painting was damaged but returned the next day.

In a 1994 settlement, the city of Chicago paid the artist $95,000 and agreed to instruct its officers on when work that is protected by the First Amendment can be seized.

Fort Worth police said the investigation is ongoing. In response to a public records request from KERA, police declined to release records relating to the matter and referred the station’s request to the state Attorney General.

Larison, from the National Coalition Against Censorship, called the situation at the museum “chilling.”

“It's relatively impossible to present a work that is interesting to people and that doesn't upset or offend people,” she said “That's because we live in a diverse society. People bring their own experiences and proclivities and curiosities to a given work. If we are to operate on this idea that only the lowest common denominator of art can be shown, art that everybody is more or less OK with, that will devastate our society and our culture.”

Sirkin said he feared that the Fort Worth incident could lead to more.

“It’s important to realize and for people to understand that censorship is like a cancer to freedom because you start here,” Sirkin said. “And where do you draw the line? And who draws the line of what can and can't be said? And if we tolerate this censorship on art then it goes to the next stage. And what's happening is happening because we've gotten afraid to fight.”

Arts Access is an arts journalism collaboration powered by The Dallas Morning News and KERA.

This community-funded journalism initiative is funded by the Better Together Fund, Carol & Don Glendenning, City of Dallas OAC, The University of Texas at Dallas, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Eugene McDermott Foundation, James & Gayle Halperin Foundation, Jennifer & Peter Altabef and The Meadows Foundation. The News and KERA retain full editorial control of Arts Access’ journalism.

For just over seven years Marcheta Fornoff produced a live morning news program on Minnesota Public Radio. She covered everything from politics to pop culture and breaking news