Is it safe to take your children to an art gallery these days? A writer complains in the New York Times about taking his twin boys, aged 7, to one of his favourite galleries and running into an exhibition with “graphic images”. The name, “And/Or”, provided no clue to the genitalia displayed; the warning sign at the entrance was in very small print.

Fred Bernstein says he has run into this sort of thing before, at a Takashi Murakami exhibition that was “a major draw for parents and kids”. He asks:

Do New York museums really want to make parents scared of what their kids will see around the corner?

I propose this rule: The warning signs should be at least as large as the exposed genitalia.

His blog entry drew quite a number of comments, most of the first dozen or so I scrolled through ticking the man off for prudery one way or another. A couple referred to “adult content”, as this stuff is often called. The article is headed, "Adult Art".

Adult?! Doesn’t it cater precisely for regressive, infantile instincts in people who refuse to grow up -- the same people who are running the galleries?