The Modern Releases Statement Regarding Removed Sally Mann Photographs in Fort Worth

Earlier this week, photographs by artist Sally Mann were removed from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s exhibition Diaries of Home, following a police report filed against the museum. After a local Dallas publication first brought public attention to the works, which depict the artist’s nude children, and at the time of the removal, the museum did not respond to Glasstire’s inquiries about the events surrounding the artworks. 

Yesterday, January 9, a spokesperson for the Modern provided the following statement: 

“An inquiry has been made concerning four artworks in the temporary exhibition Diaries of Home. These have been widely published and exhibited for more than 30 years in leading cultural institutions across the country and around the world.”

The wall at center had previously displayed four photographs by Sally Mann. “Popsicle Drips,” along with other images depicting nude children, has been removed and the remaining works have been rehung to fill the space.

Though the statement only refers to four artworks in the exhibition, Glasstire confirmed on Tuesday, January 7, that five of Ms. Mann’s works — Popsicle Drips, The Perfect Tomato, The Wet Bed, Another Cracker, and Cereus — have been removed from the show. All of these photographs show naked children, with two of the works depicting full-frontal nudity. A checklist for the exhibition indicates that these images are not part of the museum’s collection and are courtesy of Gagosian, a modern and contemporary art gallery with 19 locations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

As the Modern has stated, Ms. Mann’s photographs of her children have been published and exhibited for more than three decades. The photographs in question were taken between 1985 and 1994. In 2018 and 2019, the exhibition Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings, organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, traveled to several U.S. venues, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. According to an exhibition checklist available via the Getty Center, the show did not feature the images removed from the Modern, but did include other photographs depicting Ms. Mann’s nude children. Coverage of the show at the time does not indicate that it was met with any controversy.

Diaries of Home opened on November 17, 2024 and featured three member events and two public programs prior to the initial article published by The Dallas Express questioning if the photographs by Ms. Mann constitute child pornography. Though for most of its history the publication was a Black-owned progressive newspaper, in 2021 it was acquired by Metric Media News and Monty Bennett, a billionaire and CEO of the hospitality real estate firm Ashford Inc. who the Dallas Morning News has characterized as a “Republican megadonor,” was named Publisher. 

Earlier this year D Magazine reported on allegations from a lawsuit that Mr. Bennett “leverage[s] The Dallas Express as his personal mouthpiece.” Quickly following the The Dallas Express’ first article concerning the Modern, they published a second article in which Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare and other leaders within the local Republican party called for an investigation of the museum. 

Shahzia Sikander, “Witness.” Photo credit University of Houston staff

This is the most recent in a series of Republican-led complaints and actions taken against art institutions and artworks on display in Texas. In July, a controversial public art sculpture by Shahzia Sikander was beheaded following months of protests and a petition launched by Texas Right to Life, an anti-abortion Christian organization whose political action committee supports Republican candidates. That same month, the Lubbock City Council voted to cut funding from an art organization’s monthly public program over alleged LGBTQ programming. The issue was raised by Councilmember David Glasheen, a Republican who represents the city’s District 3. 

While Texas has been a hotbed for these types of issues, at least one other similar issue has arisen outside of the state. This summer, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis cut the state’s entire arts budget stating that tax dollars shouldn’t go to programs like “the Fringe Festival, which is like a sexual festival.” Last month, Hyperallergic reported that East Tennessee State University’s Reece Museum put into place a liability waiver that visitors must sign before entering an exhibition featuring artworks criticizing Republican leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Trump’s former Senior Advisor Stephen Miller. Republican lawmakers called for the show to be taken down. The exhibition remained on view, but curtains were added and the waiver is now required for viewing.

These actions point back to a history of the Republican Party’s complaints regarding the arts and its considerations of defunding the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).According to the National Coalition Against Censorship, in 1989  Republicans deemed work by Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe obscene. This led to Congress passing the NEA’s 1990 Appropriations Bill, which put into place restrictions on NEA grant procedures, so as not to fund projects that could be considered obscene. This set the stage for further issues regarding the work of the artists dubbed the “NEA Four,” whose NEA funding was revoked and the subsequent legal proceedings ultimately led to major changes in the NEA’s funding of artists, such that individual visual artists no longer receive government funds to support their practice. 

Ms. Mann’s works have been at the center of controversy in the past. Her photographs of her nude children first debuted at New York’s Houk Friedman Gallery in 1992, and later that year The New York Times Magazine published a story that brought into question the ramifications of the work. In a 2015 article in The New York Times Magazine, Ms. Mann explained that at the time of the series her family lived on an isolated farm. 

She recalled, “I was blindsided by the controversy. It occasionally felt as though my soul had been exposed to critics who took pleasure in poking it with a stick… And all of this was worsened by the cosmically bad timing of the book’s release, which coincided with a debate around an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs that included images of children along with sadomasochistic and homoerotic imagery, stimulating widespread discussion about what constituted obscenity in art.”

In the article, Ms. Mann also explains that in 1993 she spoke with Kenneth Lanning, a former member of the behavioral science unit at the FBI, to understand if the work could lead to legal issues. According to the artist, Mr. Lanning stated that law enforcement “wasn’t likely” to pursue her over the works.

In its coverage of the controversy around the Sally Mann photographs at the Modern, the Dallas Morning News spoke with Thomas Leatherbury and Peter Steffensen, Director and a law fellow of the First Amendment Clinic at Southern Methodist University respectively. Both Mr. Leatherbury and Mr. Steffensen contended that Ms. Mann’s work falls under the category of protected speech.

While the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has not confirmed that the artworks were seized by police, The Dallas Express has reported that photographs from the museum’s Diaries of Home exhibition have been “secured as potential evidence and will not be visible to the public” while the police investigation is pending.