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Nan Goldin, 'Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a Taxi, NYC,' 1991, 30 x 40 inches. Fair use of Nan Goldin's copyrighted image, used to describe Goldin's artistic genre and technique. Source: Permission granted by the artist's representative, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

Amid controversy, Rio museum cancels US photographer’s exhibition

Catherine Saunders-Watson
Catherine Saunders-Watson
Nan Goldin, 'Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a Taxi, NYC,' 1991, 30 x 40 inches. Fair use of Nan Goldin's copyrighted image, used to describe Goldin's artistic genre and technique. Source: Permission granted by the artist's representative, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
Nan Goldin, ‘Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a Taxi, NYC,’ 1991, 30 x 40 inches. Fair use of Nan Goldin’s copyrighted image, used to describe Goldin’s artistic genre and technique. Source: Permission granted by the artist’s representative, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) – A Rio museum canceled a January exhibition of pictures by renowned US photographer Nan Goldin because it includes nude scenes, sex and drugs, press reports said Tuesday.

The Oi Futuro museum scrapped the show after deciding some of the thousands of pictures were inappropriate, but Rio’s Museum of Modern Art (MAM-Rio) has agreed to host the exhibition instead from Feb. 11 to April 8.

“The mission of Oi Futuro is to promote education and the images are not in line with our cultural center which dozens of schoolchildren visit every day,” the museum said in a statement reported in the local media.

Oi Futuro last year selected the Goldin exhibition and sponsored it with 122,000 euros ($159,000).

Among pictures found to be objectionable are some in the “Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” a slideshow chronicling the struggle for intimacy and understanding between friends and lovers collectively described by Goldin as her “tribe.”

Rio’s Museum of Modern Art director, Luiz Camillo Osorio, slammed the Oi Futuro decision as “a step back,” noting as he took on the exhibition that “people confuse the symbolism of art with reality.”

Key themes explored by the 58-year-old Goldin, who is known for documenting her surrogate family of friends as they engage in intimate, uninhibited, or illicit activities, are drugs, violence, sex and the fear of death.

In the early 1990s, most of Goldin’s models and friends died, ravaged by AIDS and drugs.

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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

Nan Goldin, 'Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a Taxi, NYC,' 1991, 30 x 40 inches. Fair use of Nan Goldin's copyrighted image, used to describe Goldin's artistic genre and technique. Source: Permission granted by the artist's representative, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
Nan Goldin, ‘Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a Taxi, NYC,’ 1991, 30 x 40 inches. Fair use of Nan Goldin’s copyrighted image, used to describe Goldin’s artistic genre and technique. Source: Permission granted by the artist’s representative, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.