At 03:52 PM 4/20/1999 -0600, you wrote:
>The Denver Museum of Natural History will have a fall exhibition about
Amazonia.  ( Actually from the Canadian Museum of  Civilization  in Hull).
In this exhibition there are some life-size photgraphs of naked children.
Should we anticipate trouble and post a sign at the entrance - thus giving
parents a choice?  Or does doing so turn it into a bigger deal than it
really is?  Our inclination is too simply ignore it.
>

This posting raises so many issues of American culture it is hard to know
where to begin the discussion.

        * What is an exhibition about the people of the Amazon doing in a Natural
History museum?  Do they really belong with the gorillas and dinosaurs?
Note the change in museological ambiance as the exhibition migrates to the US.

        * Many years ago I asked my fifth grade teacher how come the only naked
women in National Geographic Magazine and the Museum of Natural History
have dark skin.  I will never forget how embarrassed and incoherent she
became.  Has anything changed?

        * In good Christian countries like Italy and France all beaches are
"topless" with many naked children running around.  Has this ever been the
subject of a museum diorama or life-size photograph?  American society has
a peculiar fear of nakedness.  Has there ever been a museum exhibition on
this subject?

        * If there is a cautionary notice should it warn of the voyeuristic
pleasures of seeing people just like us, or people very different from us?
Or do we focus on their nudity because the impending extinction of their
culture if not their lives just another facet of the process of making the
world safe for the expansion of Gap Kids?

Please do not take these ruminations as a condemnation of the exhibition or
the question of posting a cautionary notice.  I happen to think all museums
should have cautionary notices at the entry:  Caution! Anything Here May
Induce Thinking.

David Hupert