Facebook removes famous painting of a woman licking an ice cream cone  because it was too 'suggestive'

They must be real horndogs at Facebook



An image of a famous painting has been removed from Facebook after the social media site deemed it to be 'suggestive content'.

The image was posted online by Philadelphia Museum of Art as a part of their International Pop exhibit, which looks at the wide history of pop culture through global artists.

The photo that so offended the Facebook moderators was of Evelyne Axell’s 1964 painting Ice Cream - a painting of a woman with her eyes closed, licking an ice cream cone. The museum were lucky enough to get it on loan from the Collection of Serge Goisse in Belgium.

'We chose this work by Evelyne Axell as one of our keystone marketing images because it speaks to so many themes found throughout pop - consumption, pleasure and seduction,' curator Erica Battle told Metro.us about the exhibition, due to run from February 24 through May 15. 

But after posting the picture, the museum employees managing their social media were shocked to receive a notification from Facebook explaining that Ice Cream was in violation of company guidelines because it contained 'excessive amounts of skin or suggestive content'.

Indeed, the inclusion of the arguably phallic ice cream cone could be called suggestive, but the 'skin' shown in the image consisted only of a face and a hand. 

It was a surprise for the museum, given that they have plenty of works photographed on their page that would fall into that category, but had never before been flagged.

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