Watch Out For Those Artful Nip Slips At Tea Lounge

Image by Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

These days The Wall Street Journal has decided to focus less on economic reportage and more on daring exposés about artistic censorship at Park Slope's own Tea Lounge. Here at FiPS, that news is OUR organic meat and potatoes. We relish nothing more than a good story about bare burgers and bare breasts, and this one falls into the latter. According to the house that the Dow Jones built, some Park Slopers were recently offended by Tea Lounge's forcible acts of artistic modesty.

The Tea Lounge on Union Street, if you didn't already know, is a hot spot for tea, coffee, snacks, mix'n match old furniture and child rearing in all its many forms. Whether you're a mommy, a daddy, a nanny or a manny, you and your child are welcome at Tea Lounge. Want to breast feed your kid child over a latte? Go for it. Want to hang up art depicting the nude human form? Ahhh, sorry. Not so much. 

Artist David Mitchell Aronson recently displayed some of his artwork at the cafe, which offers a seemingly monthly rotation of local artists. Aronson's paintings depicted people, mainly women, nude. An unnamed Tea Lounge employee working as a curator requested the artist cover up the nipples of said paintings with canvas strips. This was likely meant to protect the impressionable and multitudinous children that come through the cafe on a daily basis. In true Park Slope fashion, a red hot stink ensued because of it.

This is what the Journal got out of some folks at the Lounge on the matter:

'It's absolutely ridiculous because this is such a liberal hangout, and there are so many breast-feeding mothers in here,' said Charlotte Wright, 36 years old, who came to a sing-a-long and puppet show with her toddler son. 'It's sending out the wrong message,' she add, 'that the female form is somehow shameful.'

Another patron agreed.

'It's kind of paradoxical that you can't have painted breasts,' said 23-year-old Melissa Gray, 'when there are real breasts on display here all the time.'

Surprisingly, they found someone in support of the canvas censoring:

'I think it's a good thing,' said Sharon Burnett, 50, a nanny who had brought her charge to a sing-a-long. 'Some parts of a woman should be kept private.'

The artist himself said it wasn't so much of a big deal. He even covered the nips of the male nudes to make a slightly humorous statement. Jonathan Spiel, the owner of Tea Lounge, said the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding:

Originally I'd asked him [Aronson] to make sure there was nothing uncomfortable which a little kid might ask his mom about. I don't want to offend people or cause that tension... It was misconstrued. I am as liberal as they come.

Spiel removed the canvas strips last Friday, so breasts are once again all over Tea Lounge (slight exaggeration). I say, calm the fuck down people. But what are your thoughts, FIPSters?