"Oscar with Chicken"
- Artist/Author/Producer: Robyn Stoutenburg
- Confronting Bodies: School principal, city officials
- Dates of action: 1993
- Location: Tucson, Arizona
- Description of the Art Work
- Photographer Robyn Stoutenburg's work, entitled "Oscar With Chicken,"
shows her nude 4-year-old son holding a skinned chicken and was displayed
with twenty-five of Stoutenburg's photographs at the private gallery,
Gallery 6 & 13. Other works included additional nude photographs of the
artist's son, and several depicting nude women and men.
- Description of incident
- About three weeks after the show was hung, Safford Magnet School
Principal Peg Shroder complained to police that the close proximity of
the photographs to her school was "inappropriate." She claimed the works
were visible to children as they passed by the gallery window. In
response to her complaint, without contacting the artist or the gallery,
the police went to the gallery and confiscated twelve of the twenty-five
works on display. According to Jay Butler, a resident of the building
where the gallery is housed, they took "anything with a breast, buttocks,
or penis." Police officials said the works were seized under a state
statute that "specifically says male and female genitalia or (female)
breasts can't be displayed where children can see them."
- Results of incident
- After Stoutenburg's attorney, Michael Piccarreta, met with county
attorney's office to discuss the works' artistic merit and the First
Amendment implications, county officials decided to drop the charges.
All of the photographs were returned to Stoutenburg unconditionally, but
a copy of "Oscar With Chicken" was left in the county attorney's files.
Source: Artistic Freedom Under Attack 1994
