We had these beautiful bronze-cast statues when I started in the Children's Room. (They've since been moved to the mail library, along with a bunch of ivory netsukis because someone figured out they were valuable.) They were all Greekish; three were naked--one was an athlete throwing a javelin, one was a boy looking at his feet, one was another young man just standing. All of them are between 18 inches to two feet tall. When I started, they were high on a shelf.
I took one down to examine it, and noticed a tiny little hole drilled right next to each little exposed penis. I asked what the deal was, and was told (by a staff member who agreed with the action) that a previous children's librarian had been appalled at having naked statues that children would be exposed to, so she had her husband drill a little hole beside each statues' "privates" so she could stick a plastic fig leaf stem in each statue in order to hide their "unmentionables". When the librarian before me threw away all the fig leaves, her support staff hid the statues from public view.
I just thought it was so ridiculous. The statues are on exhibit in our reading room now, and we still all have a good laugh whenever anyone else notices the little holes and asks about them...
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Date: 2007-05-21 05:24 pm (UTC)We had these beautiful bronze-cast statues when I started in the Children's Room. (They've since been moved to the mail library, along with a bunch of ivory netsukis because someone figured out they were valuable.) They were all Greekish; three were naked--one was an athlete throwing a javelin, one was a boy looking at his feet, one was another young man just standing. All of them are between 18 inches to two feet tall. When I started, they were high on a shelf.
I took one down to examine it, and noticed a tiny little hole drilled right next to each little exposed penis. I asked what the deal was, and was told (by a staff member who agreed with the action) that a previous children's librarian had been appalled at having naked statues that children would be exposed to, so she had her husband drill a little hole beside each statues' "privates" so she could stick a plastic fig leaf stem in each statue in order to hide their "unmentionables". When the librarian before me threw away all the fig leaves, her support staff hid the statues from public view.
I just thought it was so ridiculous. The statues are on exhibit in our reading room now, and we still all have a good laugh whenever anyone else notices the little holes and asks about them...