Nude perfomers groped at MoMA show

New York's Museum of Modern Art is well accustomed to the challenges of protecting its priceless collection from visitors' prying hands. But in its current show, a retrospective of performance art by Marina Abramovic, it has rubbed up against an unexpected problem.

The Artist Is Present features a rotating set of actors in teams of eight who stand facing each other or lie on the floor, dressed only in their birthday suits. The directors of MoMA knew the production would push against the boundaries of propriety for some, but what they hadn't anticipated was that a few of the visitors would be overly tactile in their interaction with the art.

Both female and male actors have reported incidents where they have been touched or even groped while performing in the nude, while some say they have been pushed and shouted at.



One performer, a dancer called Will Rawls, said that an elderly man rubbed his ribs and then touched his backside. "As he was passing me he looked me in the eyes and said 'You feel good, man.'" Rawls alerted a security guard and the man was escorted out, his 30-year membership of the museum revoked.

To some extent, Abramovic, a New York-based artist from Serbia, invites controversy and contact. One of her pieces in the exhibition, a 1977 work called Imponderabilia, has a naked man and woman facing each other in a gallery doorway. To pass through to the next room people have to squeeze between them, though they do have the option of using an empty doorway should they find this unpalatable.

The museum said there have only been a few irregular incidents and stressed that it had prepared its security staff thoroughly for the challenges of having nude performers in its spaces.