An anti-censorship advocacy group is criticizing Temecula city officials for removing a nude painting from a city-owned gallery. <\/p>\n
The National Coalition Against Censorship sent a letter<\/a> this week to City Manager Shawn Nelson after a portrait of a woman by local artist Jeffrey Scott Hebron<\/a> was pulled from the show \u201cVisual Expressions 2010\u201d at the Merc gallery because it was not "family-friendly."<\/p>\n \n\u201cSimple nudity is not sufficient ground for excluding artwork from public exhibition,\u201d the letter stated.<\/p>\n It also cited several U.S. Supreme Court cases that found public officials could not censor material simply because they found it offensive or provocative.<\/p>\n \nHebron said he went to the gallery on opening night Jan. 22, expecting to see his painting, but it was not there. He went up to the storage unit in the attic, where he found it stashed, and as he was carrying it down, artists and gallery-goers came by to take a look.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been painting for 20 years," Hebron said. "You go to any gallery in the world and you\u2019ll see this. I\u2019m not a political person, but as an artist I feel like everyone should be able to judge for themselves.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n City officials could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n \nThe coalition’s programs director, Svetlana Mintcheva, who penned the letter, said it was probably too late to rehang the painting in the gallery because the show ends Sunday. But raising the issue may prevent a similar situation from occurring, she said.<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019d like the city to apologize to the artists, but much more importantly, to clarify policy," Mintcheva said. "The city manager cannot come in and censor a curated show.\u201d<\/p>\n — Amina Khan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An anti-censorship advocacy group is criticizing Temecula city officials for removing a nude painting from a city-owned gallery. The National Coalition Against Censorship sent a letter this week to City Manager Shawn Nelson after a portrait of a woman by local artist Jeffrey Scott Hebron was pulled from the show \u201cVisual Expressions 2010\u201d at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}