''In our zeal to protect children we are erasing them entirely,''

I read the following article with some incredulity during the past week.

Is this where we are as a society?

I was speaking today with a friend on the beach and we discussed the apparent rise of the super conservative attitudes of the current generations and how that contrasts with those of the 60's, 70's and 80's. These earlier generations were far more open minded and liberated especially in the attitudes to the human body than current generations appear today.

Have a read of this article and see what you think.

The picture that was considered inappropriate. Photo: Del Kathryn Barton

Hospital charity rejects exhibition over boy photo Nick O'Malley

from the

Sydney Morning Herald January 5, 2011

A CHARITY exhibition of works by some of Australia's leading artists has been cancelled after officials at a major hospital rejected one of the works - a photograph featuring a child without a shirt on.
Echoing the 2008 furore over Bill Henson's depictions of children, officials of the Sydney Children's Hospital Foundation took exception to the image by Archibald prize winner Del Kathryn Barton of her six-year-old son, Kell.

Exhibition organiser Virginia Wilson said her board and the hospital foundation had decided to part company a month ago, leaving her to find a new charity to support. She insisted the decision was made mutually and amicably.

Another organiser, Patrick Joyce, an alternate director of Fairfax Media, owner of The Age, said he did not anticipate the concerns when he began work on the project, but defended the hospital foundation.

When the works started arriving it became clear they may not comply with the hospital's strict rules on images of children, he said. After discussion it was decided to find another charity ''to preserve the artistic integrity of the exhibition''.

Mr Joyce said it was difficult to estimate how much the exhibition, Out of the Comfort Zone, would raise, as the artists had been commissioned to work outside their normal media - painters had sculpted or taken photos, sculptors had painted. But given the calibre of the artists, he expected around $200,000 could be raised. ''It is an amazing line-up.''

Tamara Winikoff, of the National Association for the Visual Arts, said the decision was ''absurd and tragic.''

She said that after the Henson scandal, when photographs of naked children prompted media outrage and a police investigation, public authorities were scared to associate themselves with any images of children. ''In our zeal to protect children we are erasing them entirely,'' she said.

Ms Winikoff said nudity was being conflated with pornography, even though representations of nudity had been part of our artistic tradition throughout history.

The Henson scandal came after a series of similar incidents over the previous two decades in the United States, where groups - often Christian - attacked artworks, prompting failed police actions.

An early Henson exhibition was targeted in Denver shortly after a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective was closed. A decade later groups were still calling for bookshops to dump books of these artists' works.

The Sydney exhibition will go ahead in March, with proceeds to be donated to another charity, Midnight Basketball, which runs workshops and tournaments for at-risk youth.

One of the prominent painters whose work will be included, Ben Quilty, said he had been notified about the change of charities, and was happy to stick with the project.

Other artists whose work will appear in the exhibition, include Michael Zavros, Nell, Lionel Bawden, Emily Floyd, Sarah Smuts Kennedy, Sam Leach, Tim Maguire and McLean Edwards.

Del Kathryn Barton won the Archibald prize in 2008 with You Are What Is Most Beautiful About Me, A Self Portrait With Kell And Arella, her son and daughter.
Food for thought!