Obscene

Nude Pic of Brooke Shielded

Museum photo of 10-year-old star pulled.

The line between art and child pornography is evidently pretty thin. The Guardian reports that a photograph from Tate Modern exhibit due to open Thursday has been withdrawn after Scotland Yard warned the museum that the image of a nude, heavily made up Brooke Shields at age 10 could violate obscenity laws since it could be construed as sexually provocative. The exhibit catalog, in which the image appears, has also been withdrawn from sale. The image, by American artist Richard Prince, is actually a photograph of a photograph. In 1976, Shields' mother authorized commercial photographer Gary Gross to take the picture in return for $450 for the Playboy publication Sugar 'n' Spice. Shields' later attempt to suppress the picture was unsuccessful. In 1983, Price slapped a gilt frame on the photo and displayed it without labeling in a rundown shopfront on the Lower East Side, naming it Spiritual America after a 1923 photograph of a gelded horse by Alfred Stieglitz. In 2007, the work was shown in New York's Guggenheim Museum without attracting major controversy.