Safeguard or censorship? Art fair photos draw shield By JAN SJOSTROM, Daily News Arts Editor Tuesday, January 17, 2006 Gallery owner Howard Russeck conducts business Monday at palmbeach3 near the Russeck Gallery display of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ photos of clothed and nude porn stars. Some pictures were shielded after county officials complained about their content. Local officials demanded that two photographs of nude porn stars displayed at the palmbeach3 art fair be removed from high-traffic aisles, the director of the Palm Beach gallery exhibiting them and the fair’s director said. A couple of hours before the fair opened Thursday at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, four officials – Mac McLaughlin, president and chief executive officer of the Palm Beach County Convention and Visitors Bureau; Ken Foster, convention center general manager; Dave Anderson, convention center resident manager; and bureau attorney Jim Stuber – approached fair officials about the photographs displayed at Russeck Gallery’s booth. “They objected to the genitalia and even more the expression on the women’s faces, which suggested pornography,” fair director Natalia Hnatiuk said. “They said, ‘That can’t be allowed here.’ The fair was opening. I didn’t know what to do. The photographs were a good part of the exhibit. I grabbed a white cloth and draped it over the objectionable parts.” McLaughlin said convention center management had been alerted to the photographs by a center employee. The licensing agreement with convention center renters stipulates that “you can’t have anything in there that’s lewd and lascivious,” he said. “We suggested that it was in a bad spot in case kids and families came through.” It’s true that lewdness, like art, is in the eye of the beholder, McLaughlin said, but “he point is this is a public building. A private building is a lot different. This is owned by the county, and we don’t want someone coming in and complaining about something and the county saying to us, ‘Why didn’t you follow your contract?” ” The section of the agreement forbidding the display could not be obtained on Monday, a legal holiday, which is when the fair closed. The photographs by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders are part of a series on porn stars, pairing their clothed and unclothed images, said gallery director Sloane Russeck. “They’re not vulgar images at all,” he said. “They’ve been shown by some of the finest galleries and museums in the world. They were shown at Art Basel Miami Beach. It’s a disgrace that somebody could think this way at an art fair.” Hnatiuk agreed. “I feel it’s censorship,” she said. Despite the covering, Russeck sold a few of the contested images to major collectors, he said. Link to Russeck Gallery web site