Brooke Shields Child Porn Could Cost Tate $500k

A photo of Brooke Shields posing nude at age 10 could cost the Tate Modern a cool half a mil if the catalogs printed for its ‘Pop Life’ exhibition can’t be sold. Fearing more protests if they release the catalog with Shield’s preteen pose, museum’s publishing wing is facing the prospect of dumping 12,000 printed copies, according to the Telegraph. In the meantime, the Tate has taken the “temporary measure” of selling the catalog with the offending photo censored with a sticker until legal experts decide what to do, but you can see it in all its pervy glory after the jump. |Telegraph| Read more »

British Killjoy Argues for Museum Banality

Jonathan Jones, the stuffy visual arts writer for the UK’s Guardian has got it all wrong about the Tate’s decision to invite “street artists” to come paint their exterior walls. It has nothing to do with pandering, but rather staying current. And although we’re not big on sanctioned street art, this snippy reasoning fails to take into consideration, the influence this contemporary art form is having in Banksy-land, plus what the hell does he mean by “serious art” anyway:

“By pandering to its crowds instead of trying to interest them in serious art, Tate Modern has sometimes seemed to be on a slippery slide of mass cultural folly. It has been too easy to go there and come away again without learning anything – to see it as a bit of a laugh. It is nothing if not serious this year, with exhibitions of Cy Twombly and Mark Rothko. But why does it have to have its current display of street art painted all over it, like something that might decorate a Nike store? Museums don’t need to pursue fashion that desperately.”

|Guardian|