Halbakt, © Christian Schad / Leopold Museum, Wien
Most world-class institutions have never shown art at OnlyFans , where Vienna's museums are showcasing their collections. Visitors to that site can now see a tourism board account featuring suggestive artwork from Vienna institutions like the Albertina and the Leopold Museum, which has been set up by the city. At the Vienna Tourist Board press conference, Helena Hartlauer said of the unusual move, "The Viennese are very open-minded."
OnlyFans is a subscription-based app that allows users to pay a fee in exchange for access to a creator's exclusive, often erotic content. Visitors to Vienna's finest museums can now see paintings of nudists and risqué statues from their collections for $4.99 per month, with the museums claiming that these works of art are not necessarily of a sexual nature. As the city's tourism board pointed out, other social media platforms have repeatedly censored its citizens from posting artworks.
While Nobuyoshi Araki is known for his photos of naked women that depict sex, the Albertina's TikTok account was temporarily suspended and later blocked for displaying his work. When the Leopold Museum posted a piece by Art Nouveau illustrator Koloman Moser to commemorate its 20th anniversary in September, Facebook's algorithms deemed the campaign to be "potentially pornographic." The museum substituted a less offensive image for the original in order to avoid any repercussions. An ancient fertility talisman featuring a naked woman and protruding breasts was removed from Faceboook after a similar warning was posted by the Natural History Museum of Vienna.
© NHM Wien / Alice Schumacher
The move to OnlyFans, according to Hartlauer, was more than just a publicity stunt for Vienna's museums; they hoped to "start a conversation" about social media's necessity and problems. In Hartlauer's opinion, while it is true that museums can use other works to promote their own, the situation is more complex because it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine what will be labeled "explicit". Hartlauer opined that the platforms were "completely opaque".
However, museums aren't the only ones struggling with social media platforms; artists have also expressed dissatisfaction with social media guidelines like those for Instagram. There is no such thing as digital censorship, according to Haynes, who labels the deletions as homophobic, racist, fatphobic and misogynistic in nature.
OnlyFans, a new exhibit at the Vienna Museums, is reminiscent of an earlier attempt to create a platform for sexually explicit art. Earlier this year, Pornhub launched the Classic Nudes app, which enables users to locate images of nude women in some of the world's most prestigious art museums. That initiative received a poor reception from museums. Louvre, Uffizi, Museo Nacional del Prado all threatened to sue Pornhub for its recreations of famous works of art in their collections, including Titian's Urbino Venus (1538), held by the Uffizi. Pornhub was forced to settle out of court.
Vienna's tourism board, on the other hand, said the city has no qualms about its collection's depictions of sex and nudity. Hartlauer added, "We also wanted to do this to show solidarity with artists who are censored.". The inability to display your artwork on social media can seriously impede your communication efforts and even jeopardize your career, according to the author.
Selena Mattei