Elton Closes Goldin Show Over Tiny Dancers; Mommies, CultureGrrl Readers and Belly Dancers Weigh In

The anti-censorship battlelines are drawn. A new message has appeared on the website (scroll to bottom) of the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art:

BALTIC at the request of The Sir Elton John Photography Collection has closed the exhibition "Thanksgiving" by Nan Goldin. After the removal of one image from the series, it was no longer possible for BALTIC to exhibit the collection of works as the artist intended and therefore BALTIC is sympathetic to Sir Elton John's request and supportive of the decision.

The Associated Press has the story here.

Meanwhile, the art-vs.-child porn debate has occasioned much soul-searching (including a link to CultureGrrl) on the London Times' Alpha Mummy website, billed as "a new blog for mums who work, used to work, or want to go back to work one day."

Comments are still hitting my inbox from CultureGrrl readers who have become uncharacteristically interactive over my two Goldin-related posts (here and here). How come no one gets this excited by museum deaccessions?

Playwright and actress Geralyn Horton writes:

The picture seems to be an intellectual query: When children's play takes a form that in a conscious adult would be a sexual display, designed to arouse desire in an audience, does it necessarily contain an emotional, erotic, charge? Answer: no....So the significant issue becomes: Is prompting such questions "art," or a kind of scientific investigation? Either way, it is a contribution to human knowledge, and an inappropriate object for censorship.

Bobb Holt writes:

Thanks for allowing me to see Nan Goldin's "Edda and Klara Belly Dancing." Pornography can be found only 'in the minds of little people.'

And last but not least, CultureGrrl has gained hilarious popularity with the large number of gyrators who flock to a certain belly-dancing website, which yesterday posted a link to me, on the basis of the photo's somewhat misleading title.

Do you think maybe they'll give me a free lesson?