Drawing the Line : Educators and Parents Worry Students May Learn Wrong Lessons at Museums

The combination could hardly be more volatile: schoolchildren, sexually explicit art, private museums and public morality.

-- Last month, an Orange County school principal, feeling that some of the works on display at the Newport Harbor Art Museum were too sexually graphic to be appropriate for children, canceled a tour by fourth-graders. Museum staffers, through telephone diplomacy, were able to persuade 23 other principals to let their students visit the museum--after they had promised that the tours would bypass some of the potentially controversial works.

It wasn’t the first time this solution had been struck. In February, 1986, officials with the Orange County Department of Education protested two paintings included in a show of Flemish art at the museum, and tours were remapped so the offending works would be avoided.

-- Two months ago, 390 students from around the county were scheduled to see some Neo-Expressionist art at the Laguna Art Museum. Only 90 got there. The other visits were scotched after a teacher was upset by several pieces. Museum officials quickly defused the situation by warning other principals that the show had caused alarm. The principals pulled out but rescheduled tours for a later show.

None of these incidents occurred because local museums are showing more lewd art these days. Rather, they have been byproducts, school and museum officials say, of the increasing role museums are playing in public education in a decade when many parents are reacting against the sexual imagery to which children are exposed.

California schools, especially, are sending children to museums more frequently now that tax reform has curtailed classroom art education.

Museums want the school visits. Among other things, they stir the sympathies of private donors and boost attendance figures that help lure government grants. The Laguna and Newport museums say these tours account for up to 30% of their attendance.

For now, cooperation between local schools and museums remains intact, and school-museum programs are continuing. In one, called “Partners,” Orange County has joined with private donors to bus children from about 24 schools to Newport Harbor Art Museum. Public officials have not denounced any exhibitions. Meanwhile, school and museum officials are becoming more adept at averting the parental backlash that they worry might jeopardize the tours. “One picture and one parent is all it takes to attack the credibility of the art, the education programs and the museums,” said Marie Clement, the visual and performing arts coordinator for the Orange County Department of Education. “I don’t want to put this department in the position of an ogre, but this is a very sensitive matter, and we have to be careful.”

Being careful enough is tough, says Ellen Breitman, the Newport museum’s education curator. She cites her experience with the current show, “Skeptical Belief(s),” which features work by 58 graduates of the California Institute of the Arts. One piece called “Haircut,” by Eric Fischl, shows a nude adolescent girl looking at herself in a small round mirror.

On Jan. 28, the first day of school tours for the show, Breitman got a call from Georgia Menges, principal of the Acacia Elementary School in Fullerton. Menges had heard from a parent that “Haircut” was inappropriate for children. Ninety-six students were touring that day; about half already had been through.

As the others waited, Breitman told Menges that the children’s teacher had been briefed about “Haircut,” and she tried to explain the picture to Menges. “I said it’s not a dirty picture. I said it’s partly about identity, about self-identity. I said kids who had seen it had responded very maturely.”

Menges gave the go-ahead, and Breitman realized that she had to go beyond briefing teachers, which she had done with every class coming through. She called the principals of 23 other schools to discuss the art. A single principal canceled one tour for fourth-graders.

Besides warning teachers, Breitman already had volunteer guides steering student tours away from several potentially controversial works, including one with scatological references by artist Mike Kelley. But for two paintings by David Salle and two by Fischl--including “Haircut”--rerouting wasn’t possible. They were in the middle of the exhibit. Still, Breitman said, “After the original burst of concern, things have settled into a regular tour routine.”

In December, the Laguna Art Museum did not settle back into a regular routine after a teacher reacted to an exhibition called “Morality Tales: History Painting in the 1980s.”

The show included Fischl’s “First Sex,” which shows a beach party where a young nude boy watches a nude adult woman. There were paintings by Leon Golub showing the obscenities of gang violence, including a man urinating on a mutilated head.

Dinah McClintock, the museum’s education curator, said a class of fifth-graders saw the pictures and the teacher was “just livid.”

Laguna museum officials had not warned teachers. “After that confrontation with the one teacher, we contacted all the other teachers and explained to them what we had on display,” McClintock said. “About 90 kids actually went through it. Roughly another 300 were scheduled, and the teachers opted not to come.”

McClintock said the problem was that the museum is designed in such a way that it is impossible for the children to visit the museum without seeing what is in the main display space where “Morality Tales” was being shown.

Dorothy Jo Gray, an art teacher with the Laguna Unified School District, has a special assignment these days: to coordinate activities between the schools and the Laguna museum. She is also a tour guide at Newport Harbor Art Museum. Newport officials asked her to brief Laguna elementary teachers, who might be especially nervous after “Morality Tales,” about “Skeptical Belief(s).” As of last Friday, she said, she had spoken with five teachers. Two will attend; the others probably will not.

The flaps over “Skeptical Belief(s)” and “Morality Tales” were handled by teachers and principals. Only once has such an incident led to the involvement of county education officials--people who could affect policy guiding the schools’ work with the museums.

In the three years of the “Partners” busing program, which has cost about $45,000, the county has contributed $23,000 to bring children to the Newport museum. The federal government and private donors provide the balance. In the 1986-87 school year, 10,000 children visited the museum, up from 3,500 the year before.

Last January, a principal wrote to Clement that a teacher or a parent (she has since forgotten) was upset by two paintings in a Newport museum show called “Flemish Expressions: Representational Painting in the 20th Century.”

The paintings, by Pjeroo Roobjee, contained some rather explicit sexual material. Clement went to see the pictures and “came away feeling most unhappy about it.”

Newport officials, Clement said, “were very sensitive” and agreed to arrange tours so children would not see the two paintings.

What did Clement fear would result from such exposure?

“Our concern was that one parent would raise a concern that would ripple to other parents, and the museum’s reputation might be jeopardized with school committees.”

She said her ultimate worry is that the tours would be threatened. That would be tragic, she said, because the museums provide opportunities many students would not get otherwise.

Clement also stressed that she will not--cannot--try to censor the museums’ exhibitions to suit public school standards of propriety. And Breitman and McClintock said the museums will not tailor shows to avoid controversy. But both curators vowed that they will administer the tours to prevent the trouble they acknowledge could arise should the parental grapevine turn sour on a show, drawing museum trustees, city councils and county supervisors into the fray.

“I think it would be a catastrophe if people started talking about censorship,” said Lynn Chaldu, president of the El Morro Elementary School PTA in Laguna Beach. “But I think that there are people out there who take a more conservative approach than I do. I think that if there is not some sort of joint effort to screen appropriate exhibitions ahead of time, there will definitely be more of a problem.”

“My feeling is that we should never censor what we have,” McClintock said. “But on the other hand, we should warn people about what they will see when they come.”