Museum opts for ball control after naked men row

A museum has covered up hundreds of huge posters showing three naked footballers advertising an exhibition celebrating nude men in art.

The full frontal poster – showing an image called Vive La France by artists Pierre & Gilles – sparked hundreds of complaints in Vienna, Austria.

One angry local threatened to paint over the model’s manhoods herself.

A Wiener Leopold Museum spokesman said: “The men are clearly not sexually aroused so we thought it would not cause offence.

“But we don’t want to disturb either children or adults and it’s clearly something people don’t want to see and we have to respect that,” they added.

The photo artwork was made in 2006 to show the multicultural society of France and to celebrate it by including a footballer from the black community, the Arabic community and the white community.

In contrast the museum does not plan to cover up a giant sculpture named Mr Big of a naked man complete with clearly visible private parts that is on display outside it’s front door.

The sculpture made by the Salzburg artist Ilse Haider was unveiled recently together with the poster campaign in advance of the exhibition which opens on 19 October.

The exhibition will run until January 28 of next year and has 300 exhibits from 100 different artists across Europe and America, covering over 200 years of art history.

Museum officials said it was about time that an exhibition had been dedicated to naked men, given the large number of exhibitions already dedicated to the female form.