Fired Docent Back at Museum

A volunteer tour guide fired in May by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art after showing a group of 10-year-old girls a sculpture depicting sex in the back seat of a car has won her job back.

The museum “regrets” the circumstances involving the dismissal of Stephanie Riseley, officials now say.

Riseley was ousted as a museum docent after she explained the Edward Keinholz artwork “Back Seat Dodge ‘38” to fifth-graders on a school field trip from Visalia.

The girls’ principal complained to museum officials that the artwork and Riseley’s commentary about it were “clearly inappropriate for our students.”

Afterward, the museum briefly closed the sculpture’s car door and posted a guard next to it--reminiscent of actions taken in 1966 when its initial display triggered a furor among public officials.

The firing prompted complaints from some museum members--and the threat of a defamation and freedom of speech lawsuit from Riseley.

In inviting her to return, officials congratulated Riseley on the “high quality” of her previous docent work.

“We appreciate the strength of your commitment to public access and education,” said Priscilla Gibbs, chairwoman of the museum’s Docent Council, in a Sept. 14 letter to Riseley.

Gibbs could not be reached for comment Monday.

But Riseley, a former actress and writer who began volunteering as a gallery tour guide in 1993, said she was pleased to have her docent’s job and “my good name restored to me.”

Riseley said she does not know when she will resume her tour work. Since her firing, she has worked as an English teacher for immigrants in downtown Los Angeles.

She vowed that those students will be invited on her museum tour “as soon as they can understand it.”

Riseley’s interpretation of Keinholz’s famous work was all too clear, however, to the Central California schoolgirls whose gallery visit in March led to her dismissal.

“Back Seat Dodge ‘38” features life-size, faceless figures of a drunken woman and man necking in the rear of a real 1938 Dodge sedan. Empty beer bottles are scattered next to the car.

The artwork was so jarring at the time of its initial exhibition 33 years ago in the county art museum that county supervisors tried to close the exhibit down, labeling the loaned artwork as “revolting,” “blasphemous” and “way beyond the limits of public decency.”

For that first show, the car’s door was kept shut and a guard stood nearby to keep children from peeking in. Later, as the piece gained acceptance, the museum purchased it for $225,000 and put it on permanent display in 1986 with the door open.

According to Riseley, she warned the 10 schoolgirls and their adult chaperons that the sculpture was one that “almost shut the museum down in 1966. It has to do with sex. Is there anyone here who has not heard about sex yet?”

When no one spoke up, Riseley said she explained that the scene represented Keinholz’s first sexual experience. The beer bottles and the faceless, empty-looking figures suggested a meaninglessness to it all, she told the girls.

Riseley said Keinholz was trying to express “that you only get one first sexual experience, so think before you act. Make it meaningful, make it special, make it beautiful.”

The school’s principal complained to museum leaders that the chaperons were “stunned and confused by the docent’s comments” and regretted not having intervened.

In firing Riseley, docent leaders blasted what they labeled “your self-appointed role as a teacher of subjects such as sex education.”

In reinstating her, the docent tour leaders expressed a desire that all future school tours be made “age-appropriate.” Riseley said she does not regret her comments and insists that her presentation was appropriate for that age.

Museum spokesman Keith McKeown said Monday that he knows of no new guidelines that have been issued, however.

But new rules may be coming, said Wayne Clayton, an attorney who helped Riseley win her job back.

“My guess is the museum will be a bit more hands-on in its supervision of docents in the future,” he said.