Center Does an About-Face, OKs Display of Nude Lennon Photo

Reversing an action that unleashed a storm of controversy, the trustees of the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton voted unanimously Thursday night to restore a photograph of the late rock star John Lennon to a current art exhibit.

Muckenthaler curator Norman Lloyd, who had opposed the decision to remove the photo, resigned immediately after the vote, saying the board had usurped his authority.

Even though the board eventually supported his position, he felt the panel should not be making decisions on what should be displayed in the gallery. By voting to restore the work, he complained, the board had officially assumed the power to decide which works will be included in future shows.

The photograph was pulled from the exhibition at the city-run gallery before it opened Saturday because some trustees complained that the work did not fit what they planned as a “positive show on heroism.” The photo, which ran as the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in January, 1981, shows Lennon nude and curled in a fetal position, embracing his fully clothed wife, Yoko Ono.

Board Chairman Beverly Gunter, who had taken responsibility for the decision to remove the photo, acknowledged Thursday that she and some fellow trustees had overstepped their bounds. The board had never formally voted on whether to remove the Lennon photo.

During a public meeting at the Muckenthaler, Gunter said that she had been asked to preview the show, titled “Heroes, Heroines, Idols and Icons,” and to take part in the selection process.

The decision to remove the work had been assailed by members of the public and some in the arts community. Since the move was publicly disclosed on Tuesday, the center has received more than 100 telephone calls, most of them critical, from as far away as Mississippi.

Mark Story, a Los Angeles photographer who has eight photographic portraits of homeless men in the show, said Thursday afternoon he would ask to have his works removed from the show regardless of the board’s decision.

“If the Lennon work stays, I still want my work taken down,” Story said. “I don’t like the general smell of pressure on art that isn’t deemed acceptable being removed from a show.”

A Los Angeles collector and a Long Beach gallery had threatened to demand the return of their works if the Lennon portrait was not restored to the show. Los Angeles collector Tom Hatch loaned four lithographs of works by artists Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. The Long Beach-based Works Gallery loaned works by Jim Morphesis and Frank Dixon.

Photographer Annie Leibovitz, who took the portrait just hours before Lennon was shot to death in December, 1980, has called the work’s removal “disgraceful” and the reported reasoning behind the decision as “preposterous.”

“It’s a sign of something very bad that’s happening in this country,” Leibovitz said in a statement released Wednesday. “The cultural atmosphere is becoming more and more conformist and cowardly.”