Breasts? No. Genitalia? No. Buttocks? Maybe the top few inches. In fact, the nude subject of "Rose," a charcoal and pastel drawing by Stewart Freshwater, shows so little of herself, he says, that it's not clear at a glance whether the figure is a man or woman.
We can't confirm or deny Rose's lack of sexual specificity, however, because we can't actually see "Rose" anymore—until recently, it hung in the city of Las Vegas' Bridge Gallery, but was recently pulled after a city employee complained that it made for a hostile work environment.
"In consultation with human resources, we decided it would be prudent to remove it," says City Manager Doug Selby.
At issue is whether the Bridge Gallery—an exhibit space in the elevated passageway between City Hall and the parking garage across Stewart Avenue—is, in fact, primarily a gallery or just a nicely decorated workspace. If it's the latter, says Selby, it's subject to the tough dictates of Title VII, the federal statute protecting workers from office harassment. If it's a gallery, well, that complicates things.
As Selby points out, "a majority" of city workers have to pass through the space on their way to work, which may designate it as a work area.
As Freshwater points out, it's advertised as a gallery and is open to the public.
Depicting himself as a man caught between conflicting federal mandates—the need to protect employees from offensive workplace material ("which is in the eye of the beholder") and this little thing we call the Constitution ("and its protections of free speech")—Selby has asked the city's attorneys and Human Resources people to figure out the Bridge Gallery's status. He thinks the determination will be made "in a few weeks," and says "Rose" might be rehung then. This isn't, he adds, the most pressing dilemma facing the city.
True. But it does pose a few larger questions. For example: How much power do you give the complainer? "Rose" had hung in the space for several weeks before the complaint. Was it inappropriate then, too? What about before that, when it was displayed in the city-run Charleston Heights Arts Center? It passed city muster then. Or does a complaint change the piece—if not its content, then its meaning? Selby's halfhearted response—"Like many things in life, until someone complains, things go on as they always have"—doesn't quite clear the bar, either as an explication of the city's display policy or as a guideline by which society should work out these kinds of issues. It's OK until someone complains is hardly a workable guideline, particularly in Las Vegas, where issues of public space, potentially offensive material and free expression collide all the time, as the Hard Rock's billboard people will tell you. (The city's gallery officials didn't return a call for comment by press time.)
When the situation is described to him, ACLU attorney Allan Lichtenstein says it sounds like a misapplication of Title VII. It wasn't intended to grant individuals a "heckler's veto," he says. The work has to be offensive to reasonable people, not just one. "It sounds like it's way off base," he says.
"What's unfortunate," Lichtenstein says, "is that the city was so willing to cave in. It just goes to show that depending on government to safeguard our free-speech rights is like having cats guard the safety of mice."
Freshwater, a longtime Las Vegan and graphic artist in the city's public works department, says he'll be happy if the city rehangs "Rose," offers an apology—and perhaps talks to the complainer about "the difference between a workplace and an established forum of free expression."