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nceca (archie bray exhibit censorship)

updated wed 30 apr 97

 

Karl David Knudson on mon 14 apr 97

On Sun, 13 Apr 1997, Suzanne Wolfe wrote:
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> In regards to the
> exhibitions, I am a bit curious about the studentshow at UNLV, and the
> two works that were housed in an upper section of the gallery. They were
> not at all identified by artist, and seemed like am after thought. They
> also dealt with sexually explicit subject matter. I do not understand
> why they were up in that space, and why they were not even titled. Does
> anyone have a clue about those pieces?

The story as told to me by a woman involved in the setting up of these
exhibits, and actually quit her job because of this and other problems.
The two works were excerpts from the Archie Bray show which had been
censored from the Archie Bray exhibit due to their sexual nature. From
this woman's descriptions it seems that the people of Las Vegas are quite
prudeish when it comes to nudity/sexuality (GO FIGURE?) and that there was
quite a bit of censorship of art work involiving these subjects.
Apparently there is a history of work and artists being censored when
attempting to show sexual work as well as one example of a work with
various religious iconography from a variety of reasons also being
censored.

Its too bad I would think that the one place on earth that would be
totally open to works of a sexual nature would be Las Vegas...

Karl in Eugene