Censorship
As an artist, art student, and art educator I am whole-heartedly against censorship in art. The parents of my students, however, are not. I love love love to use this website as a tool in my classroom, unfortunately it is now blocked in my school system because of nudes. I know it's asking a lot of tagging and programming. but this website is such a great academic resource and it breaks my heart that all of my students are losing it without an option to sensor nudity or violence.
Devan
shared this idea
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Devan Rushing
commented
@WikiArt Team
I love that painting! I would maybe show it to my high school age students but probably not to my middle or elementary students. Sorry for the super late reply but it's continued to be an issue to use this website at my school so I haven't been visiting often.
Correct me if I'm misreading your tone, but it feels to me like you are being a little condescending about this issue. As I've said before, I'm with you! I feel that artwork should be free and uncensored! But we don't live in a world where everyone has the same viewpoint. Just as well, I'd love for my middle school students to be able to browse artworks at their leisure without running into artworks like https://www.wikiart.org/en/qiu-ying/unknown-title-1 (sexual act warning) which certainly are important but not something I (or parents) would feel comfortable with allowing a young student to see.
I hope your perspective has changed over time. I'm just hoping you can add a feature to make this website more accessible to students and educators. If you would like to talk more about this feel free to email me! I just really really want my students to be able to use a site like this, it's so unique!
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Igor Ginzburg commented
I like Devan's idea, I think it deserves attention. As I see it, it is not about creating another, "safe" version of the site - it is rather about giving an opportunity to art schools, kids, and parents to create a "safe" account. If properly implemented, this idea will bring this site many new thankful users.
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https://www.wikiart.org/en/pablo-picasso/the-girls-of-avignon-1907
should this artwork be banned for kids, from your point of view?
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Hilary L McLean
commented
@WikiArt Team It isn't about hurting someone's feelings, it's about us art educators not losing our jobs. Your website is beautiful, shame that thousands of art teachers can't use it with students. I can't believe you think it would result in just still lives and landscapes.
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Devan
commented
@WikiArt Team: I would never ask for you to remove those artworks, rather that you could create an account option (like a filter) to not show those images if it was switched on. Something to allow students to browse the site at their leisure without seeing nude or more violent pieces. Kind of like how Google SafeSearch works.
@Stranger: This would be a good idea as well. It's not blocked on teacher computers, but at least for me it would impractical to use it in that way. For certain examples, this method would be fine. But for some research assignments it would be near impossible to complete.
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Stranger
commented
Also you can ask your local administrators to unblock site on your personal computer. Then create your own collections without nudity or violence and show it to your students on projector or something like that
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At present we are blocking images of "nu genre" from the first page. As for creating nu-less version of the site, we are strongly against it. We respect decision of your school to block our site, but we will not corroborate it. If we close access to all content that may harm someone's feelings, we'll be left with landscapes and stillives solely.
