Utah Art Teacher Fired Over Classical Nude Paintings: What Happened

Originally published 2018-01-19.

François Boucher’s Brown Odalisque (Wikimedia Commons), one of the postcards at the centre of the dispute

In December 2017, Mateo Rueda, an art teacher at Lincoln Elementary School in Hyrum, a small town in Utah’s Cache Valley, lost his job after a colour lesson in which some pupils came across postcards of famous paintings that include nudity. A parent went to the police alleging the children had been shown pornography. Investigators and prosecutors looked at the cards and decided they were nothing of the kind, and no charges were filed. The firing stood anyway, and Rueda said he would appeal it.

The case drew national attention because it sits on a fault line many schools know well: art history is full of the human body, while parents of 10- and 11-year-olds reasonably want a say in what their children see. Here is what was reported, where the accounts differ, and what the episode suggests about teaching art to young children.

What happened in the classroom

According to Rueda’s account, reported by KSL and others, the lesson on 4 December 2017 was a colour study for upper-grade pupils (reports mention fifth and sixth graders). Near the end of class he sent students to the school library to browse art books and a box of educational postcards and to pick works that showed the colour relationships they had been studying.

The postcards came from The Art Box, a boxed set published by Phaidon that was already part of the library collection, according to the design site It’s Nice That. Most cards show familiar works by artists such as Monet, Van Gogh and Miró. A few show classical nudes. The paintings named in coverage were:

• Amedeo Modigliani, Iris Tree
• François Boucher, Odalisque (often called the Brown Odalisque)
• Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Valpinçon Bather
• Sandro Botticelli, Primavera

Rueda said he had not known the box contained nudes. When some children reacted with discomfort, he said he took those cards back and went through the set to pull out anything he thought unsuitable. He also told the class, by his own description, that the human body appears often in museum art and that such images are part of a shared cultural heritage.

The complaint, the police and the firing

Within days, a parent reported Rueda to the Cache County Sheriff’s Office, accusing him of showing pornography to children. Sheriff Chad Jensen later confirmed that when deputies arrived, they found the principal shredding the postcards at the school district’s request. Prosecutors reviewed some of the images and concluded they were not pornographic, so the criminal side of the matter ended there.

The employment side did not. Rueda was dismissed; the date most often reported is 8 December, four days after the lesson. The Cache County School District declined to explain its reasons publicly, calling it a personnel matter. Rueda requested a hearing and said he wanted to clear his name.

The story became public largely because another parent, Kamee Jensen, defended the teacher. She wrote to the local paper, The Herald Journal, and shared on Facebook a message Rueda had sent to parents explaining his side.

In that message he argued that “art is better understood when placed in its proper context.” Whatever one thinks of the firing, it is a fair summary of how most art educators approach the subject.

Where the accounts disagree

It would be easy to tell this as a simple tale of prudish parents versus a cultured teacher, but the reporting shows a messier picture. A school official, speaking anonymously to The Herald Journal, said the dismissal had more to do with how Rueda talked to the children about the images than with the images themselves.

One parent, Venessa Rose Pixton, told reporters that Rueda belittled uncomfortable pupils, including her 11-year-old son, and that he told them to grow up and be mature about it. She also said he made a remark about female nipples. Rueda denied making that remark. He said what he actually told the class was that when they grow up and visit museums, they will see nudity and should not be shocked by it.

Because the district never laid out its full reasoning, outsiders cannot say which version is closer to the truth. What is clear from the record: the cards were in the school’s own library, the police found no crime, and the dispute turned on tone and handling as much as content.

The paintings themselves

The works named in the case are not obscure or provocative pieces. They are staples of art-history surveys.

Ingres, The Valpinçon Bather (1808)

Ingres painted this seated woman, seen from behind, while studying at the French Academy in Rome. It takes its name from a 19th-century owner and has hung in the Louvre since 1879. Critics were cool at first; today the museum counts it as a masterpiece, and Man Ray’s famous 1924 photograph Le violon d’Ingres borrows its pose.

Boucher, Odalisque

Boucher was a leading Rococo painter at the court of Louis XV. His odalisques, reclining figures inspired by European fantasies of the Ottoman harem, are among the most reproduced images of 18th-century French art, and they are frankly sensual. Of the cards in the box, this is the one most parents would probably hesitate over for a primary-school child.

Modigliani, Iris Tree

Iris Tree (1897–1968) was an English poet, actress and artist’s model, the daughter of the actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree. She sat for several painters of her circle, and Modigliani’s elongated nude of her is typical of his style.

Botticelli, Primavera

Botticelli’s allegory of spring, in the Uffizi in Florence, is one of the best-known paintings of the Italian Renaissance. Its figures wear sheer drapery rather than nothing at all, which shows how broadly “nudity” was drawn in the complaint.

How schools can handle nudity in art

Teachers and parents who have followed cases like this tend to land on a few practical points:

• Know what is in the materials. A box of postcards or a library book can contain images a teacher has never seen. Previewing resources before a lesson avoids surprises.
• Match the image to the age. A Botticelli or a Greek statue is routine in a secondary-school art class; a frankly sensual Rococo nude is a different matter for a ten-year-old. Choosing well is not censorship.
• Tell families in advance. Many schools send a short note before museum trips or art-history units, which lets parents prepare their children or raise concerns early.
• Respond to discomfort kindly. Children who giggle or look away are reacting normally. A calm, brief explanation works better than a lecture, and removing an image a pupil finds upsetting costs nothing.
• Separate concern from crime. A parent’s objection is a reason for a conversation with the school. Reporting a teacher to police over a postcard of a Louvre painting escalated a classroom question into a criminal inquiry that found nothing.

Common myths about the case

“The teacher deliberately showed nude paintings.” Every report, including the parents critical of him, describes the nudes as cards that were already in the school’s collection and that pupils came across while browsing.

“He was charged with showing pornography.” He was investigated after a complaint, but prosecutors declined to file charges because the images were not pornography.

“The school fired him only because of the nudity.” The district gave no public reason. An anonymous official said the issue was his manner with the children, which he disputes.

The case remains a useful reminder that how adults talk to children about art can matter as much as which pictures are on the table. What do you think a school should do in a situation like this?

Sources: KSL: Utah teacher fired after students see nudity in art; It’s Nice That (January 2018); Wikipedia: The Valpinçon Bather; Wikipedia: Iris Tree; Facebook post by Kamee Jensen (embedded above); image: François Boucher, Brown Odalisque, via Wikimedia Commons.