Bowling Green bans art depicting oral sex

“Sami Drops a Deuce,” “John Put His Head in the Oven” and “The Man Who Hasn’t Seen His Genitals in Years” are just some of the titles of sculptures Bowling Green State University senior administrators deemed “appropriate.” However, roughly two weeks ago, those administrators removed a sculpture from an exhibit on the university’s Firelands Campus titled “The Middle School Science Teacher Makes a Decision He’ll Live to Regret,” sparking a heated controversy surrounding issues of art censorship, freedom of expression and child pornography.

According a news release from BGSU, the sculpture “graphically depicts a female middle school student, on her knees, performing oral sex on a standing male middle school science teacher.”

On March 17, David Sapp, an art professor at BGSU Firelands and director of the Little Gallery, was asked by Firelands Interim Dean James Smith to take down the sculpture because there were complaints that Smith worried would result in “problems with the press” or “legal” issues of the sculpture being labeled as “child pornography,” according to a memorandum Sapp sent to all faculty and staff at BGSU Firelands.

After Sapp refused to remove the sculpture, BGSU Interim Provost Mark Gromko directed Smith to remove the artwork.

According to Sapp, the sculpture was “near the window of the gallery, but could not be seen unless you walked into the gallery.” However, BGSU administrators were concerned that children attending the McBride Auditorium, located adjacent to the gallery, “may have been directly affected by the specific criminal act depicted.”

“As an institution of higher education, Bowling Green State University strongly supports the right of free speech and artistic expression. However, we also have a responsibility and obligation to not expose the children and families we invite to our campus to inappropriate material,” the news release said.

Despite the administration’s concern, Sapp said the McBride Auditorium is not exclusively a children’s theater and he had asked the director to keep the door locked and the gallery closed during children’s theater productions.

Sapp said the art exhibits at the Little Gallery are meant to “promote thought, discussion and a meaningful visual experience in a responsible way,” and he urged his colleagues to be aware of the “visceral force” and “tone” of the administrators at BGSU.

“The dean has established a very dangerous precedent for censorship in the Little Gallery and within every part of the college,” Sapp said in the memorandum. “The dean has severely undermined the very nature of the learning environment at Firelands College.”

After administrators censored the sculpture, Sapp closed the entire exhibit of 13 sculptures and is considering resigning from his position as director.

Other sculptures in the exhibit titled “A Bakers Dozen” depicted events or situations connected with the artist’s life, such as his wife combing his daughter’s hair, personal friends who committed suicide or social issues such as obesity.

“Each one is telling a little story, and this was just a series of little stories about people I know, things I’ve read, my family; they’re basically domestic stories in many ways,” said James Parlin, the exhibition’s artist and chair of the art department at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania.

Parlin said it wasn’t necessary for BGSU administrators to remove the sculpture and he supported Sapp’s decision to close the exhibit entirely. The aluminum sculpture in question is about “moral decision making,” Parlin said.

“The intent was to show someone making a bad decision, and I showed the man staring forward at his future of disgrace. In other words, it’s about a bad choice and the consequences of that bad choice,” Parlin said. “I was blindsided by this whole thing; I never expected anything like this in a million years. I didn’t plan this, for god’s sake.”

Parlin said he was not notified before the sculpture was removed, and he said it would have been easy to restrict access to children while still allowing adults to view the artwork. According to Parlin, American society benefits from freedom of expression and institutions of higher education such as BGSU should be environments that “honor that principle.”

“I like to be able to read what I want, listen to what I want, see what I want, and I don’t like other people making that decision for me,” Parlin said. “I think it’s an enormous mistake when we let other people decide that for any of us. Now protecting children is a different issue; I protect my own children.”

The controversy surrounding the sculpture is surprising because so few people have actually seen the artwork, Parlin said.

“This whole controversy is about a piece that virtually no one has seen. It’s not about the piece of sculpture; it can’t be because no one has seen it,” he said.

Nathan Trask, a junior majoring in liberal arts at the BGSU Firelands campus, said he saw the exhibit in its entirety and participated in protests following the administration’s decision to censor the sculpture. Trask said the exhibit wasn’t “overly impressive.”

“It was really more the social ramifications that were involved, the girl giving oral sex to a teacher and a few people committing suicide,” Trask said.

According to Trask, public institutions shouldn’t have the ability to censor art and the ramifications of BGSU censoring artwork reach far beyond Parlin’s sculpture.

“Institutions are supposed to further emotional and social and all sorts of learning, and to tamper with this side of learning, you cannot get the overall learning experience that you’re supposed to get from a state university,” Trask said. “People are careful what they say all the time; they’re careful what they write; they’re careful what they create in art classes because they don’t want all this outrage happening, and it really should be the opposite way.”

Tom Lingeman, an art professor at the University of Toledo, said the BGSU Firelands situation is “clearly” an example of censorship. Lingeman said he can’t be sure about anything specifically because he hasn’t personally seen the sculpture, however, “as far as [he] can tell there is a child sensitivity issue.”

Lingeman said he believes the BGSU administrators have to consider child sensitivity, but other choices could have been made to prevent closing the entire exhibit.

“If indeed the proximity of this to the involuntary viewing of children is a problem, then that needs to be considered,” Lingeman said. “In certain cases, censorship can protect those people who do not have the capability of accurately rationalizing what they see.”

According to Lingeman, the exhibit should have featured a warning label just as films or television shows feature parental guidance warnings.

“Censorship is practiced every day, and we don’t raise eyebrows about it all the time,” he said.

The exhibition policy at The Center for the Visual Arts in Toledo “promotes freedom of expression without restriction on content or form. The views expressed ... are those of the exhibitors and may not be those of the department or the university.”

Lingeman said it is UT’s policy not to censor, and students are encouraged to freely express themselves through their artwork. In addition to encouraging UT students, Lingeman said he thinks Parlin should “make sculptures of whatever he wants and to show it. ... However, the viewer should be warned that others have looked at the work and deemed it to be potentially ... sexually explicit or violent.”

Sapp and BGSU administrators could not be reached for comments beyond the official news releases.