Viennese Museum to Cover Nude Ads

Alexander Klein/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images The exterior of the Leopold Museum in Vienna.

BERLIN - A museum in Vienna will be censoring large posters that depict three male soccer players wearing nothing but their socks and cleats after the advertisements provoked an outcry in the city, Reuters reported.

The nearly 200 posters, which can be seen around the city, are promoting “Naked Men,” an exhibition opening at the Leopold Museum on Friday that will showcase the evolution of male nudity in art.

“We knew they'd be controversial, but the intense reaction even exceeded my expectations,” said the museum's spokesman, Klaus Pokorny, in a telephone interview.

< p>“People insulted us and called us stupid, claiming what we were doing amounted to pornography,” he added.

The photograph in question is “Vive la France,” by the French artists Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard. It shows three men of different skin colors on a soccer field wearing red, white and blue socks amid a sea of tricolor confetti.

“It was mostly women who complained, saying they had to shield their children's eyes from the pictures of the naked men,” Mr. Pokorny said, adding that Austria is typically a very socially liberal country.

“It's the 21st century, but nudity still isn't totally accepted,” he said.

The museum has decided to cover up the soccer players' midsections with bands of red paper. Mr. Pokorny said the color red was chosen to draw attention.

“The color red is a signal,” he said. “It says, ‘Here is something out of the ordinary.'”

Mr. Pokorny added that the mus eum had also displayed the ad on its Facebook page, only to have the site's censors remove it because it showed male genitalia.

The exhibition will be on view through Jan. 28. About 300 works of art by nearly 100 artists will be displayed.