A Mount Airy art gallery covered up its lesbian founder’s drawings, prompting a battle over censorship and homophobia

The lesbian founder of a Mount Airy art space filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission earlier this month, alleging that because of homophobia, board members turned two of her drawings away from public view, effectively censoring her work.

The complaint, and the controversy the board’s actions have since sparked in one of the city’s most progressive enclaves, echo charged debates across the country over LGBTQ rights and what to do when artwork offends some viewers.

In one of the drawings, Kissing in the Summer Sun, two women kiss; in the other, Academy Days, three nude women lounge on a couch. Arleen Olshan, the 78-year-old artist and cofounder of the Mount Airy Art Garage, where the works were displayed, created both pieces about 50 years ago. The drawing of three women lounging was part of a citywide all-women art show and was featured in an Inquirer article in 1974.

Olshan found criticism of the drawings reactionary. After trying to have a productive conversation with the board and change the organization’s policies, to no avail, she decided to fight back publicly.

“The more I thought about it, the more I was upset,” Olshan said in an interview with The Inquirer. “We’re going backward in a lot of states regarding our human rights, and I don’t want to see that happening. Certainly not in Mount Airy.”

The Board of Directors denied the allegations in a statement posted on its website, which said in part that Olshan’s “communication contains misinformation, exaggerations, and several statements not based on facts. MAAG has always been intentionally inclusive and diverse. The Board values freedom of expression, diversity, and the inclusion of all voices, including the LGBTQ+ community.” The board did not respond to further requests for comment from The Inquirer.

Olshan founded the nonprofit Mount Airy Art Garage with her wife, Linda Slodki, in 2009. (Years earlier, she coowned Giovanni’s Room, the legendary LGBTQ bookstore in Center City). They envisioned it as a collaborative space to showcase work by local artists, hold workshops, and share skills. Over the years, MAAG, as it’s called, has displayed fine art, jewelry, pottery, and photography. The building on Germantown Avenue has a gift shop, an event space, and multiple studios. Olshan is a custom leatherworker and has long maintained a studio there.

After years of running the organization, Olshan was diagnosed with lung cancer last fall. She planned to step down as executive director at the end of this summer, but her final months did not go smoothly.

Before she left for vacation in April, she said, she mounted portable display walls around her leather studio to protect her work while she was away. She hung up some of her drawings on those walls before she left.

The complaint, filed on July 9 and first reported by the Philadelphia Gay News, alleges that while Olshan was away, three board members turned the portable walls around so the drawings could not be seen. No one contacted her for permission.

When she returned and asked what had happened, the director of the board, Patricia Smith, said, “Who wants to see naked women?” according to the complaint. Troubled by the exchange, Olshan sent a series of emails to board members over the next few weeks, to which she said no one responded. She felt confused and disrespected.

The board gathered June 24 for a “special meeting” requested by Olshan to discuss the situation. Slodki transcribed and included the minutes in the formal complaint. According to the notes, Smith apologized to Olshan but said, “I don’t want my 5-year-old grandchild seeing this. This is not discrimination.”

Another board member said, per Slodki’s notes, “Even gay people don’t want something like this right in their face.”

“I’m very sad about all of it,” Olshan said in the interview. “These are labors of love — to just talk about them in such awful ways is really terrible.”

At the board meeting, the artist requested that the board publicly apologize to her in an email blast, add a nondiscrimination policy to the nonprofit’s bylaws, put up a sign at the gallery’s entrance that “speaks to self-expression and creativity,” and train volunteers to respond to any requests to censor artwork on display.

The board declined to make those changes but said it would consider adding a “warning sign” to the front of the gallery for future shows, according to a letter Smith sent to Olshan after the meeting, which was also included in the formal complaint.

“When you hung your artwork of nude figures on the outside wall, three Board members felt they were not appropriate for children to see in a commonly used public space,” Smith wrote. “The walls were turned around to put your artwork inside your studio, which all other studio members do.”

Smith wrote that the issue was primarily about “studio regulations,” not censorship and homophobia, and that after Olshan’s retirement, the organization planned to “continue to grow [her] legacy and hopefully [her] vision.”

Smith invited Olshan to display her figure drawings in an upcoming exhibit at the gallery and curate the 2024 International Women’s Day show. She also said the organization would like to name a space after Olshan in her honor.

“We feel badly that she feels so hurt by this,” Smith told PGN.

A few days after receiving Smith’s letter, Olshan filed the complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission.

“To me, this is homophobia,” Olshan wrote, “cloaked in ‘protecting the children.’”

This piece has been updated to reflect the official name of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission.