A hypothetical situation:

Your University Art Museum holds a wide array of nude or sex-related
images and objects in its permanent collections. A curator compiles a
topical exhibition on "male-ness" utilizing these nude or sex-related
images and objects from the permanent collection. Advisories about
potentially sensitive content are placed in entrances to the gallery and
on any printed materials. [All business as usual so far]

Your museum also hosts an online database with searchable catalog
entries and images for all its holdings. These nude or sex-related
images and objects are available to the general public through your
online database on an ongoing basis.

For your new compiled exhibition, you decided to include an accompanying
exhibition page on your website that includes all the selected nude or
sex-related images and objects along with curatorial remarks and
comments.

At this point, the University Administration requests that the content
be removed from the website. Even though these images and objects are in
the permanent collections, in the galleries, and always available
through an online database, now that they are compiled on one page on
the website, they become a problem.

Have any art museums (preferably university art museums) out there dealt
with this type situation [namely, complications with illicit content on
your website]? 

If so, how did you deal with the issues of:

1) wording - drafting and placing advisories online and onsite
2) access - can age requirements be placed on web pages before they can
be seen?
3) context - how do you protect and encourage viewers not to take the
images out of context?
4) feedback - how is feedback handled through the website?

Any thoughts on the subject would be much appreciated!

All the best --

Bertram Lyons

Respect your world!
 
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

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