The Vienna Tourist Board has launched a channel on adult content subscription service OnlyFans so that local museums can share an uncensored look at “Vienna’s 18+ content”.
Vienna’s tourism board has taken to OnlyFans to escape the censorship of nude art on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
“Vienna is home to some of the world’s most famous artworks, many containing nudity,” the board’s OnlyFans account says.
“The most prominent social networks have policies in place that ban or censor such works. With our OnlyFans account, we want to give these artworks the freedom they deserve – including on social media.”
Vienna‘s OnlyFans account includes nudes from the collections of the following museums – Albertina, Leopold Museum, Kunsthistorisches Museum, and Naturhistorisches Museum Vienna.
Giving artworks freedom on OnlyFans
The tourism board also released a teaser, titled ‘Vienna strips on OnlyFans’, showing partial views of artworks by Egon Schiele, Amedeo Modigliani, and Peter Paul Rubens.
“The Viennese are very open-minded,” Helena Hartlauer, head of media relations at the Vienna Tourist Board, told ARTnews.
Hartlauer told the Guardian that social media restrictions make promoting exhibitions at Vienna-based museums “almost impossible”.
“Of course you can work without that, but these artworks are crucial and important to Vienna,” she said. “If they cannot be used on a communications tool as strong as social media, it’s unfair and frustrating.”
“Compared to the artists who fall under this censorship, the tourist board in Vienna and even the art collections have it easier,” Hartlauer added.
“We just want to question: do we need these limitations? Who decides what to censor? Instagram censors images and sometimes you don’t even know about it – it’s very untransparent.”
Images: OnlyFans/Vienna Tourist Board
