MADISON (WKOW) -- There's a blank spot on the wall amid a striking collection of photos at the Overture Center's latest exhibit, "Living with HIV/AIDS: Perspectives Through the Lens."
The gallery, which runs through Sunday, features work done by people who have HIV/AIDS. These photos are their stories.
Project coordinators hope to bring about awareness of the disease and lessen the stigma surrounding it. But on the day before the exhibit opened, one photo was pulled from the wall, with a small card in its place explaining the photo removed "may not be suitable for all viewing audiences."
The photo depicts a naked man sitting with several pill bottles hiding his genitals. Titled "Stripped," it was meant to send the message that while everything else can be stripped away, the fatal HIV/AIDS virus remains.
The Overture Center says the picture is too graphic to be featured in the main rotunda entrance to the building, through which hundreds of young children pass every day on field trips and family outings.
"If a little kid sees medicine on the genitals, it's going to cause some confusion, without question," said Overture spokesperson Robert Chappell.
Chappell says it's not so much the photo as it is the location.
"If this exhibit were in a location anywhere else in the building, where a kid might see it but 7,500 kids aren't going to see it, it would probably still be there. If it was in a spot where we could put up a sign saying 'for mature audiences,' it would probably still be there. It's all about appropriateness and a certain amount of discretion," said Chappell.
But Heidi Nass, who coordinated the gallery and also took part as a woman living with HIV, says Overture's decision further stigmatizes and silences the HIV/AIDS community.
"The further you squash the story, the more silence you create. That's my big concern. And for those of us living with HIV, it doesn't get any easier when an art center chooses not to defend art. They didn't give the community a chance to applaud the art, to criticize the art, or to see the art. They - and I don't know who 'they' are - just decided that it wasn't okay," said Nass.
The Overture Center did give the artist a chance to replace the photo with a different one, but Heidi Nass says it's not that easy, because these photos are really a part of each artist's intimate story and they were chosen carefully.
There are two other photos by the same artist that also include naked men, but Overture officials did not find those to be inappropriate.
When asked whether Overture could simply relocate the gallery, Chappell said that was not an option, given the fact that other exhibits currently inhabit the rest of the space.
This is the first time in its six-year history that the arts center has removed a piece of art
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