Richard Prince photo withdrawal "not in public interest"

Tate was threatened with prosecution and sex offenders register

By Cristina Ruiz

The Art Newspaper, UK: 14 October 2009
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Richard-Prince-photo-withdrawal-not-in-public-interest%E2%80%9D/19595
[ http://tinyurl.com/yk9q9gn ]

Metropolitan police officers warned Tate that the gallery would face
almost certain prosecution unless a Richard Prince photograph showing
a naked image of Brooke Shields, aged ten, was removed from display.
According to sources close to the story, they also warned that
conviction would automatically lead to the names of the senior
individuals deemed responsible for the exhibition being included on
the sex offenders register.

Officers from the police's obscene publications unit visited Tate on
30 September to discuss the inclusion of the Prince work, _Spiritual
America_, 1983, in the gallery's "Pop Life: Art in a Material World"
exhibition. They advised that the image was "indecent" under the
Protection of Children Act of 1978 and that by showing it, Tate would
be committing an offence. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed
yesterday that the Metropolitan police had sought its advice before
the Tate meeting.

Following the visit from the police, the photograph, which was in a
separate room with a warning about its content, was removed from
display and the catalogues for the show were withdrawn.

A spokesman for the police denied that officers had "threatened" Tate
staff but confirmed that they "explained the legal position which is
clear that anyone convicted of distributing or showing an indecent
image of a child would automatically be placed on the sex offenders
register".

However, art world insiders accused the police of heavy-handed
tactics. Mark Stephens, an art lawyer with Finers Stephens Innocent,
who has advised on many exhibitions and has also worked to remove
paedophile images from the internet, said: "Not only must you commit
an offence but it must also be in the public interest to prosecute.
With exhibitions in cultural institutions [it] can rarely, if ever, be
in the 'public interest' to prosecute. It [would not be] in the public
interest to prosecute [Tate over] this Richard Prince image,
particularly taking account its long history of public exhibition."

_Spiritual America_ was included in the Guggenheim's Richard Prince
retrospective in 2007-08, where it gave its title to the exhibition.

"This smacks of over-zealous policemen with little cultural
understanding, tromping about the Tate in their hobnail boots, to the
cultural deficit of society and this exhibition," said Stephens.

Yesterday, Tate reopened the Richard Prince room in the "Pop Life"
exhibition with a later version of the Richard Prince work, _Spiritual
America IV_, 2005. The gallery said in a statement that this work had
been produced "in collaboration with Brooke Shields". The catalogue
remains unavailable as discussions continue with the gallery's legal
advisers. Tate had printed 10,000 paperback copies of the catalogue,
priced at £24.99, and 2,000 copies at £35, making a total retail value
of almost £320,000.

_Spiritual America_ is an appropriation of a picture originally taken
by the commercial photographer Gary Gross for a Playboy publication in
1976 with permission from Shields's mother, who was paid $450 for the
image. Brooke Shields later attempted to suppress the picture.