Police in Fort Worth, Texas have seized and ‘secured as potential evidence’ several photographs by Sally Mann on display at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The intervention follows a complaint, made on 26 December by Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare in the Dallas Express, calling for a criminal investigation.
Among the works in the exhibition Diaries of Home, which opened on 17 November 2024, The Perfect Tomato (1990) and Popsicle Drips (1985) feature nude portraits of children that residents have likened to ‘pedophilia’ and ‘child rape’.
Born in Lexington, Virginia in 1951, Sally Mann is a Guggenheim fellow and three-time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. In 2001, she was named ‘America’s Best Photographer’ by Time magazine.
The group show Diaries of Home features the works of 13 women and nonbinary artists exploring the ‘multilayered concepts of family, community, and home’ through documentary photography. The museum warns that the exhibition ‘features mature themes that may be sensitive for some viewers’. In their reporting, The Dallas Express referenced the exhibition’s ‘pictures of naked children and LGBTQ+ content’.
Writing to Artnet News in response to the controversy Julie Trébault, executive director of Artists at Risk Coalition (ARC) warned of ‘legislative attacks on LGBTQ+ content, threats to public funding, and public campaigns that mischaracterize art as obscene or harmful… This growing wave of censorship, which disproportionately targets women, LGBTQ+ creators, and artists from historically marginalized groups, often relies on the construction of a controversy as pretext for a wider purge of targeted artwork’.
Diaries of Home is on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, through 2 February 2025. Sally Mann’s photographs are not visible to the public while the investigation is ongoing.
