LOCAL : Fullerton Art Exhibit Drops Nude Photo of John Lennon

A well-known photograph depicting former Beatles’ star John Lennon in the nude embracing a fully clothed Yoko Ono has been removed from an art exhibit at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton.

The portrait by Annie Leibovitz was pulled from the exhibit “Heroes, Heroines, Idols and Icons,” which opened Saturday, after objections from several members of the center’s board of trustees.

Complaints were reportedly raised over the photograph’s appropriateness to the show’s theme and not over the nudity.

“It doesn’t express ‘hero,’ it expresses ‘anti-hero,’ ” Gunter said. “To me, to fit the hero show, something about the work should be somehow a character strength,” said Beverly Gunter, chairwoman of the Muckenthaler board.

Another Leibovitz photograph that remains in the exhibit shows the late artist Keith Haring, nude but covered with body paint.

Taken the same day Lennon was shot to death Dec. 8, 1980, the photograph shows Lennon in a fetal position, embracing a reclining Ono. His buttocks are visible in profile.

The photograph raised some controversy when it ran on the cover of the Jan. 22, 1981, edition of Rolling Stone magazine, when several Southern California supermarket chains refused to carry it.