Columnist Susan Snyder: Painting is a nude awakening

Monday, Feb. 2, 2004 | 8:30 a.m.

Even as Elko's temperatures dropped to single digits last month, the coldest place in town was inside the Northeastern Nevada Museum.

A painting of a nude woman by Tuscarora pastel painter Sidne Teske received a chilly reception from top museum staff. And when asked to remove it from a museum exhibit of art by Nevada women, Teske took down that one and another to boot.

The paintings "Seeker" and "Sleeping with the Dragon" are a pair that she hoped would open discussion about abuse of women. Instead, they have prompted discussion of censorship.

"I don't do this stuff to make people feel offended," Teske said via telephone from her home last week.

"I am exploring abusive behaviors and the emotions that are elicited from abusive behavior," she said. "I want to make people feel things."

Claudia Wines, museum executive director, said she felt uncomfortable -- about the reaction the painting would have created among museum patrons and about asking Teske to remove it the week of Jan. 18.

"It was very, very hard. And I've taken a lot of flak for it," Wines said.

"But his is Elko. It's not Seattle or San Francisco. Our membership is a lot of older people and families with small children," she said. "It was good art. It was a good painting. But it was just inappropriate for a history museum in Elko, Nevada."

There has been some confusion as to which painting Teske actually was asked to remove. She said Wines made the request over the telephone and called the painting by the name "Seeker."

But in talking with Wines last week, the painting she described as the one she deemed inappropriate is "Sleeping with the Dragon."

Reports published last week said a letter from local school district officials prompted the painting's removal and described it as a silhouette. But Wines recalled a different sequence of events.

"There was nothing silhouette about it," she said. "And the school district did not come to us. We called them afterward and asked, 'What would you have done if we'd left it up?' And they said they would have canceled their programs or asked that it be removed before children's visits."

About 1,700 local schoolchildren visit the museum throughout the year, and hundreds are expected to file through the exhibits during the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, which ended Saturday.

Teske's work is part of a display by a 10-year-old group of Northern Nevada female artists who call themselves the Wild Women. Their exhibit runs through March.

The paintings she removed from the museum can be viewed online at www.wildwomenartists.com. (Don't forget to put "artists" in the address, or you'll see a totally different group of "wild women.")

Wines, a longtime board member of the 36-year-old museum, has been its executive director for a little more than two years.

"I've never had to make a decision like this before," she said. "I don't think there's been a decision like this as far as I know in the history of the museum."

Teske replaced the controversial nudes with a pair of landscapes.

"I'm not sure what they're trying to protect who from," Teske said. "But it's a successful painting. It has gotten response."