The Austrian capital’s tourist board has spoken out against the banning of art on social media sites.
In protest of platforms’ continuous restriction of Vienna’s art institutions and galleries, the city’s tourist agency has created an account on OnlyFans, the only social network that allows representations of nudity.
The Albertina Museum’s new TikTok account was banned and subsequently barred in July when it posted works by Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki that depicted a veiled female breast, prompting the museum to create a new account. This comes after Instagram determined in 2019 that a painting by Peter Paul Rubens breached the platform’s community rules, which ban any portrayals of nudity, even if they are “artistic or creative in nature.”
A short video featuring the painting Liebespaar by Koloman Moser, made to mark the Leopold Museum’s 20th anniversary this year, was rejected by Facebook and Instagram as “potentially pornographic”.
The image of the 25,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf figure taken by the Natural History Museum in 2018 was considered obscene by Facebook and deleted off the network.
Facebook and Instagram both rejected a short film depicting Koloman Moser’s artwork Liebespaar, which was created to commemorate the Leopold Museum’s 20th anniversary this year.
These and other works are now on full show on Vienna’s OnlyFans page, free of restriction, and only advertised on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.