A group of museums in Vienna have banded together to create an OnlyFans account in order to post nude artwork on different social media platforms.
The “Vienna Laid Bare” initiative was launched by Vienna’s tourism board in mid-October, along with its OnlyFans Account. The Vienna Tourist Board was surprised to find that a TikTok account of the city’s Albertina Museum was banned in July for posting photographs from Japanese artist Nobuyoshi Araki for depicting obscured breasts. TikTok banned the account, forcing the museum to start a new one.
A similar incident occurred in 2019 when Instagram decided that a painting by Peter Paul Rubens violated the platform’s community standards, which prohibits any depictions of nudity – even those that are of an artistic or creative nature.
In 2018, advertising regulators in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States all refused to display a collection of nudes from impressionist Egon Schiele. The decision came after a lengthy debate, but ultimately there was concern that “the depiction of genitals, though artistic, could be at odds with public wellbeing.”
The recent TikTok ban was the final straw in “this new wave of prudishness.” More and more, status and famous works of art are being blacklisted under social media guidelines, and “repeat offenders” are finding their accounts temporarily suspended, wrote the Vienna Tourism Board in a press release. The statement continues by saying, “that’s why we decided to put the capital’s world-famous ‘explicit’ artworks on OnlyFans.”
Vienna tourist board spokesperson, Helena Hartlauer, has noted that it has been “almost impossible” to use any sort of nude artwork in a promotional capacity.
Social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, have a long history of banning any post that features nudity or anything that could be interpreted as pornographic or sexually explicit. OnlyFans, on the other hand, is a social media platform known for published adult content.
The OnlyFans account will feature groundbreaking works from artists such as Egon Schiele and Koloman Moser, a twentieth-century graphic artist. Subscribers to Vienna’s 18+ OnlyFans account will receive a Vienna City Card or an admission ticket to see one of the artworks in person.
OnlyFans announced it would ban any sexually explicit content this past August, but reversed this decision after backlash from adult content creators.
More from us: Ouija Boards Banned From Shops ”“ Encourages Kids to Dabble in the Occult
The primary issue for these Austrian museums is the fact that artwork itself is being censored to begin with. Helena Hartlauer declared that “part of what makes this problematic is that there are no clear guidelines on these platforms, nor rhyme or reason, in regards to what nudity is considered offensive and what nudity is not. We’ve had 3000-year-old works of art be censored. Clearly there is something wrong here.”