Salem College artwork blocked from view during lecture | News

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — A senior art student at Salem College is taking the school to task for preventing public access to her work, which included paintings of nude women and a dominatrix, during Monday evening’s presentation by author Charlaine Harris.

“I feel their first responsibility should be to their students,” Shannon Johnson said this week. “I spent all year creating this work. The fact that they felt they could cover it that easily did not sit well with me.”

The work in question is part of “Novation: 7 Emerging Artists,” a senior-thesis show on view through May 18 in the Salem Fine Arts Center.

Johnson’s “Novation” work takes up two hallway walls just outside the center’s Hanes Auditorium, where Harris spoke. A curtain was placed across the entrance to the hallway during Harris’ presentation; the work of the six other “Novation” artists could be viewed.

In March, a Stevens Center lobby exhibit of artwork with adult themes, including a rendering of a vagina, prompted a complaint from a patron attending the Piedmont Opera’s production of “The Crucible.”

The complaint prompted a lively community discussion of whether opera patrons should have been warned about the nature of the artwork ahead of time.

This article was written by Ken Keuffel and originally published by The Winston-Salem Journal. Click here to read the full story.