Hysteria Wins, Thanksgiving is Over

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Following the hysteria that lead police to confiscate a single Nan Goldin photo of two girls playing, Elton John has decided to pull the installation piece, Thanksgiving, from a Gateshead gallery. Here's the statement from the BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art's Web site:

BALTIC at the request of The Sir Elton John Photography Collection has closed the exhibition Thanksgiving by Nan Goldin.

After the removal of one image from the series it was no longer possible for BALTIC to exhibit the collection of works as the artist intended and therefore BALTIC is symaphetic to Sir Elton John's request and supportive of the decision.

AP has picked up the story here. The AP story includes the sentence, "police confirmed they were looking at the picture to assess whether an offense had been committed," which reminded me of the old joke about the community board that confiscated some alleged pornography and were forced to review the material over and over and over and over and over again before they ruled.