Art gallery removes lesbian founder’s nude drawings

The 78-year-old founder of a community gallery in Philadelphia is accusing the nonprofit’s board of directors of homophobia after members removed two of her drawings from public view while she was out of town.

“The more I thought about it, the more I was upset,” Arleen Olshan, a cofounder of the Mt. Airy Art Garage (MAAG), told the Philadelphia Inquirer of the unauthorized removal.

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Now she’s filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, alleging harassment, wrongful pressure to leave the gallery, and random censorship of her artwork. 

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“My responsibilities as executive director at MAAG have been usurped by the Board with no notification,” Olshan writes in the complaint. “I no longer feel this is a safe space for LGBTQ+ artists.”

“The ongoing attacks against me,” Olshan states, “citing safety of children and family values are homophobic code words. I have begun moving out of my studio as of July 3, 2023.”

The artist founded the nonprofit with her wife in 2009. 

After she was diagnosed with lung cancer last fall, Olshan took a sabbatical from her art practice in April. Before she left, she says she moved portable display walls around her studio and hung the two drawings there.

One of the pencil drawings, titled Academy Days, depicts three nude women lounging on a couch and brings to mind a life-drawing class. The second drawing, Kissing in the Summer Sun, shows two women lying in the grass in an embrace. Neither artwork could be considered pornographic. Both date back to the 1970s.

According to the complaint, filed on July 9, in Olshan’s absence three board members turned the walls in front of her studio around, removing the drawings from public view.

On her return, Olshan complained to the board and was shocked by the response.

“Who wants to see naked women?” asked the board’s director, Patricia Smith, according to Olshan.

“When you hung your artwork of nude figures on the outside wall, three Board members felt they were not appropriate for children to see in a commonly used space,” a letter to Olshan from the board stated.

“I don’t want my 5-year-old grandchild seeing this,” Smith said in a subsequent meeting.

“Even gay people don’t want something like this right in their face,” another board member stated, according to the complaint.

Olshan was despondent.

“I’m very sad about all of it,” Olshan told the Inquirer. “These are labors of love — to just talk about them in such awful ways is really terrible.”

She filed her complaint days later.

“We’re going backward in a lot of states regarding our human rights, and I don’t want to see that happening. Certainly not in Mount Airy.”

In a statement posted to the MAAG website, the board denied the allegations and claimed Olshan’s “communication contains misinformation, exaggerations, and several statements not based on facts.”

“MAAG has always been intentionally inclusive and diverse,” the statement continues. “The Board values freedom of expression, diversity, and the inclusion of all voices, including the LGBTQ+ community.”  

“There has been an ongoing argument about my work — citing children and family values,” Olshan says in her complaint. “My work is also the only artwork focused on feminist and lesbian themes. Why now? No one’s work has ever been censored at MAAG.”

“To me, this is homophobia,” Olshan writes, “cloaked in ‘protecting the children.’”