
Scandal alert! When the National Gallery’s summer blockbuster, Pop Life, opens on June 11, at least a few racy artistic oeuvres will have Ottawa’s would-be censors all a-twitter. A portrait of a nude Brooke Shields, aged 10, has already been removed from the program. But that still leaves Jeff Koons’ photographic blow-ups of porn star La Cicciolina. Pop Life is about pop art — and as the megastars of pop art well know, a whiff of scandal is just the thing to draw crowds. As a preamble to the main event, Paul Gessell looks back at past art shows that have offended local sensibilities