Elton John a Thanksgiving No-Show

Art gallery cancels Nan Goldin exhibit at John's request after police launch a child pornography investigation into one of the photographs from the singer's personal collection

By Natalie Finn Oct 02, 2007 1:28 AMTags

Elton John decided that Thanksgiving wasn't complete unless all of the invited guests were in attendance.

A week after a photograph from the "Rocket Man" singer's personal collection became the focus of a child pornography investigation, John asked the art gallery that had displayed the piece to shut down its entire exhibition, a 149-picture retrospective of the work of American photographer Nan Goldin.

The show, Thanksgiving, featuring pictures taken between 1973 and 1999, had been scheduled to run at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art until Jan. 20.

"Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, at the request of the Sir Elton John Photography Collection, has closed the exhibition," a spokesman for the Gateshead gallery said in a statement Monday.

"After the removal of one image from the series it was no longer possible for Baltic to exhibit the collection of works as the artist intended. Therefore Baltic is sympathetic to Sir Elton John's request and supportive of the decision."

Added Jane Jackson, curator of John's collection: "It was always intended that the installation be exhibited as a whole, and not on a piecemeal basis, and our decision has been made with regard to the artistic integrity of the work and the artist."

Northumbria police currently have the controversial photograph, Goldin's Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing, and the Crown Prosecution Service is still trying to assess whether it violates the country's child porn laws.

"The circumstances around who may have been involved in the production of the image and who may have owned it or owns it forms part of the investigation," a police spokesperson said Sunday.

It was an apparently concerned member of the gallery's staff who alerted police about the photo, a move praised by Baltic chairman Ian Wrigglesworth.

"When that doubt was raised about this particular one, advice was taken and I think the management behaved extremely responsibly, and did what most people in the public would want them to do," Wrigglesworth told BBC News last week.

John, who also owns works by Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Man Ray and Ansel Adams, said last week that Goldin's picture, which depicts two naked girls, one with her legs apart, has already toured the U.S. and numerous European cities, including London, without incident.