A screen shot from Etam’s lingerie campaign at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris (photo via thelocal.fr)

Thanks to Hyperallergic commenter Nick Fortunato, who left us a tip on our recent “Babes in Museum Land” post, we were directed to this story today of three French models stripping down in Paris’ Musée d’Orsay for an Etam lingerie campaign. Fortunato hit on what a lot of people are wondering about Babes at the Museum, sharing, “I’m glad someone figured out a way to use it as marketing.”

We reached out to Xavier, founder of Babes at the Museum, to see what he thought of these particular babes and the whole publicity stunt:

“It has no ties to what we do in anyway and strips — no pun intended — BATM of its real concept. There’s no style element and no appreciation for art or museums. These are obvious babes in a primitive way.”

Xavier also pointed out that live nudity in museums seems to be the new hot thing. Photographer Zach Hyman, whose does quite a bit of nude portraits (maybe because of his last name?), created a scandal when one of his models was arrested for posing in the buff at the Met. Ironically, Hyman faced no charges.

Xavier’s blog tries to pick up on the more “subtle harmonies” between beautiful art and beautiful people, but unfortunately whenever there’s a hot girl, there’s often a marketing campaign just around the corner. Many of the male artists whose work hangs at the d’Orsay would probably be totally down for Etam’s titillating stunt.

Liza Eliano is Hyperallergic’s editorial assistant by day, and bad TV fanatic by night. She recently graduated from Barnard College with a BA in art history and a newfound love for girl power. She was...

3 replies on “Babes at the Museum, the Marketing Campaign?”

  1. And are there as many women artists whose work is hanging at the d’Orsay? (Not) And how would they feel about this “titillating” stunt? The first post about this project pissed me off (such a pretentious and fatuous thing, judging from the pictures that were included; nothing much more than taking pictures of women he considers worth ogling) but this one at least made me laugh–that he would have such a high-handed response (Oh no….these models in lingerie are totally unrelated to what I’m doing!). Puhleeze.

  3. lighten up people. needles to say, lighten up gets flag burners and wavers and HR advocates to talk to multi-cukltural plurists(herein the good sense). we need to talk to each other so high-toned old christian lady (sat night live) can talk and vent to man in the dumpster.

Comments are closed.