Sylvia Sleigh replaced the languorous female bathers of Orientalist scenes with her male friends. But these aren’t the muscular male nudes one might expect. In the winter of 1975, a justice of the New York State Supreme Court spearheaded a campaign to remove a handful of artworks displayed at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. The museum, then housed in the rotunda of the Bronx County Courthouse, had mounted a survey of contemporary art made by women, titled “The Year of the Woman.” The justice took offense to a few works in particular, including a detailed portrait of a naked
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