The Vancouver Maritime Museum is defending its new exhibit on the art of sailors, despite some parents’ concerns about the abundant depictions of, ahem, “shore leave.”
Ann Pimentel, a school teacher and mother of two young boys, took her family to the Tattoos & Scrimshaw exhibit recently but was horrified to find roughly a third of the pieces sexually explicit.
“It’s supposed to be a child-friendly museum,” Pimentel said. “What disturbed me is just beyond the room is a child’s area; the boat where the children play and they pretend to be captain.”
“I don’t understand the judgment.”
The exhibit focuses on early forms of tattooing and scrimshaw, a method of carving or engraving pictures into whale teeth, as produced by explorers and whalers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Unsurprisingly, the museum found the sailors tended to favour boats and women as art subjects.
“These were young, tough men doing dangerous work far from home for long, long periods of time,” said executive director Simon Robinson. “Naturally they would be thinking of coming home and what their experience was going to be when they arrived home.”
Some pieces depict full-frontal female nudity, while others feature men and women having sex. A few have text captions such as: “A whaler’s hope of the first night ashore.”
IN PICTURES: See examples of sailors' saucy scrimshaw artwork here
But the racy scrimshaw art is displayed in tall cases marked by warnings, and Robinson said parents are advised about the content at the front desk before they enter the museum.
He also took exception to the exhibit being described as “whale-tooth porn.”
“Pornography, it’s a low form of art. I see this as folk art but with an erotic subject,” Robinson said.
Pimentel believes the museum’s warnings aren’t prominent enough, and that the website should also have an advisory about the questionable content.
“These images are images that I feel are not appropriate for children, or even children who are under the age of 18 – young people, vulnerable teens,” she said.
The mother-of-two said she may think twice before bringing one of her classrooms to the museum, which is in the midst of a conscious push for more eye-catching exhibits.
Robinson said groups of students are always led on a controlled tour of the exhibit, and the offending pieces aren’t going anywhere.
“We’re being as sensitive as we can,” Robinson said. “These pieces, I think, are important to have within the exhibition because they describe the entirety of the maritime experience.”
“They can’t be hidden because they’re inconvenient for some people.”
Have your say: Should the sexually explicit scrimshaw images be removed?
