Art Teacher Fired After Parents Complain About Nudity In Classic Paintings

A former Utah elementary school art teacher says administrators were wrong to fire him after he allowed students to sift through several famous historical painting post cards -- and one parent called the police.

Mateo Rueda was the Lincoln Elementary School art teacher until on Dec. 4 he asked students to peruse an “Art Box” of Phaidon postcards depicting classical works ranging from Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, and works by artists including by Botticelli, Gauguin, Monet and others, the Herald Journal reports. Rueda tells local news outlets that he was not aware of three or four pieces of the nearly 100 postcards that showed nudity.

The Cache County Sheriff's Office says that pornography charges were even considered after at least one parent filed a police report.

His Dec. 4 color study exercise “used some materials from the school that were there in the library,” said Rueda. One student in the class, 5th-grader Bella Jensen, told Fox 13 Now that Rueda “explained to us that there might be some pictures that we’ll find uncomfortable” before starting the color assignment.

The 5th grader added that some fellow students giggled and a few of the images “were a little weird.”

But a few of the famous paintings contained nude images that at made at least one parent and several students in the class uncomfortable.

“Children were expressing their discomfort and then explaining that they felt it was inappropriate,” Rueda said. And after assessing the class he maintained that “images were part of history, they are icons.”

At least one parent of a student in the class complained, with Venessa Rose Pixton saying that she took issue with Rueda’s entire handling of the classroom art assignment.

“My son felt that Mr. Mateo belittled them,” Pixton told Cache Valley’s Herald Journal. “He said Mr. Mateo even told the class ‘There’s nothing wrong with female nipples. You guys need to grow up and be mature about this.’”

“It wasn’t the pictures so much that really bothered me; it was the method in which he went about it afterward,” she told HJ News, saying that he didn’t live up to responsiblity of reviewing the pictures beforehand.

Rueda was sent a termination letter on Dec. 8 that gave him an ultimatum to either resign or be terminated under the administration’s discretion. Rueda says he hopes he can appeal the firing but the Cache County Sheriff’s Office said a complaint was filed and potential pornography charges were considered.

But the county attorney decided not to file charges against Rueda because the images were not pornography and the postcards in question had been school property for years.