Art or pornography: MOCA photograph concerns city council president

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Jacksonville city leader is calling for funding to be pulled to the Museum of Contemporary Art over a photograph he says is "pornographic."
 
City Council president Clay Yarborough is upset over a photograph of a woman eight months pregnant lying on a couch with her breasts exposed.
 
The photograph is hanging in the museum's atrium, which is open to the public.
 
In an email to Mayor Alvin Brown's Chief of Staff Chris Hand, Yarborough called the picture a "pornographic display" and said the woman in the photo has "bare breasts exposed" and is "laying in a questionable position."
 
He wrote that the city is currently budgeted to give MOCA $233,029 in the current fiscal year and asks for that funding to be pulled.
 
"Unless Mayor Brown supports this inappropriate, pornographic display, and accepts that anyone, including children can enter and see it, I insist that you immediately cause to be pulled all funding designated for MOCA for the current fiscal year or otherwise explain how this will be addressed within 24 hours," Yarborough wrote in the email on November 25.
 
The photograph is part of an exhibit featuring more than a dozen photographs by Angela Strassheim.
 
"We've had not a single complaint from a parent, a teacher or a student," said museum director Marcelle Polednik.

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Polednik said the museum also has an education team that works to explain the context behind the images.
 
She said Strassheim often focuses her work on the metamorphosis of women.
 
"She captures many images that are sort of narratives or chapters in the evolution of girls becoming women," she said. "And clearly, motherhood is one of those moments that deeply marks your life as a woman."
 
Polednik added that nudity in art dates back to around 28,000 BC.
 
"Representations of the nude are one of the most prototypical representations in art, period," she said, "particularly images of the female nude and the female nude as a fertility symbol."
 
In a statement to Action News, Yarborough said, "I am trying to promote a positive moral climate in our city and though some will defend the pornography by labeling it 'art,' we need boundaries in order to be healthy, especially when it concerns our children."
 
The controversy may be just what MOCA expected.
 
"Our role as a contemporary art museum is always to galvanize conversation," said Polednik. "It's to propel people to think. It's to propel people to talk and to create dialogue and this exhibition is no exception. I'm very proud of the fact that, as a museum of contemporary art, we have spurred a dialogue that clearly there are passionate feelings about."
 
A chain of emails between Yarborough and Hand confirms MOCA property is city-owned. Hand tells Yarborough he has alerted the Executive Director of the Cultural Council about the concerns. The Cultural Council awards the annual grant funding.
 
The Cultural Council responded to Yarborough's concerns with this statement:
 
"The Cultural Council stands ready to defend the artistic and curatorial choices of our cultural service grantees. Council President Yarborough's objection to a photography exhibit featuring the human form, which has been present in museums, homes and galleries since the dawn of time, is unfortunate and could be viewed as an effort to stifle artistic expression. This particular exhibit, which celebrates the "transitional points" in life - "the precious, fleeting nature of childhood and adolescence" - opened to rave reviews last week. We're proud to have an organization of MOCA's caliber in our community and we stand behind it, it's executive and the artist behind this amazing exhibit."

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