the prehistoric ‘venus of willendorf’ has been censored by facebook, a response to the social media giant from the natural history museum in vienna revealed on wednesday. considered a masterpiece of the paleolithic era, the statue features a voluptuous naked woman.

 

the statue is some 30,000 years old and was discovered in the austrian village of willendorf in the early 20th century. in december 2017, an italian woman named laura ghianda posted a photo of the ancient limestone nude on facebook — only to have it removed for being deemed inappropriate. a more recent post on january 9 on the naturhistorisches museum’s facebook page calls attention to the censorship of ghianda’s image. the post proclaims: ‘let the venus be naked!‘

 

the natural history museum said in a statement: ‘we think that an archeological object, especially such an iconic one, should not be banned from facebook because of ‘nudity’, as no artwork should be…since 29,500 years she shows herself as prehistoric fertility symbol without any clothes. now facebook censors it and upsets the community,’ it explains. meanwhile, the naturhistorisches museum’s own facebook posts featuring the venus of willendorf have never been edited by facebook’s nudity policies.

 

this isn’t the first time facebook has made the headlines for censorship reasons. two years ago, the social network censored an image of edvard eriksen’s famous ‘little mermaid’ statue in copenhagen. the social network is currently on trial in france for censoring a 2011 post featuring gustave courbet’s ‘l’origine du monde’ (1866). 

 

header image courtesy of @naturhistorisches.museum.wien