End run. noun 1: a football play in which the ball carrier attempts to run wide around the end of the line; 2: an evasive trick or maneuver.

Football definitions aside, I've always been oddly fascinated by end runs, the practice of subverting rules or avoiding proper channels. Richard Nixon committed probably the most famous of all end runs, when he had to go to his third choice to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox,  choices one and two having refused to do the dirty deed. Alexander Haig is known for an infamous end run, when he tried to jump the line of presidential succession after Ronald Reagan was shot. And more recently, some folks have accused a certain Democratic presidential contender of making an end run for delegates from two state primaries that were universally considered to be out of bounds by all involved.

On a personal level, I remember a great end run by the publisher of a magazine I worked for, someone who never really had much day-to-day interest in the editorial lineup. One day this individual, for whom I otherwise have great respect, suggested really forcefully that it would be great if the staff could to do a cover story on an artist whose work is sold on QVC and in shopping malls, and an artist whose company just happened to be a constant and prominent advertiser in our magazine. A fluffy cover story was done. That was yucky.

Speaking of art, there's a pretty nifty end run afoot a few hours down I-64. And instead of being reported on in the local newspaper, it's actually being committed by the local newspaper.

"Student Gallery" is an art contest in the Norfolk area that is now in its thirty-sixth year. Sponsored by the Virginian-Pilot, fledgling high school junior and senior artists have a chance to have their work reviewed by some very distinguished folks in the art world and hung at the Chrysler Museum of Art, one of the top museums in the South. (Having shot many a wedding there, I've spent a lot of time touring the galleries. I love art nouveau posters, particularly the newspaper and magazine ads of Louis Rhead, and the Chrysler has one of the best collections of art nouveau glass anywhere.) This year's Student Gallery judges included the director of the Muscarelle Museum at the College of William and Mary and the education director of the Chrysler itself.

But technically speaking, there were really two other judges involved, newspaper employees with no art experience  to speak of, called in from the bullpen after the first two winners were rejected by the paper. First, 17-year-old high school senior Nancy Reid was selected as the contest's winner for a self-portrait that included what one judge described as "discreet" nudity. No go. A new judge was brought in and this time the work of Jasmine Childs was declared victorious. But once again the newspaper voided the result because Childs' sculpture depicted a female torso in ceramic. And faster than you can say John Ashcroft and a nude statue of justice, the newspaper brought in its own ringers to validate a third winner.

Wow. I don't think even the rigged finale of the 1972 gold medal basketball game between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, an event that scarred my childhood, had as many outcomes.

It was just last November that  I wrote about the absurdity of Starbucks' record label, Hear Music, covering up the tights-clad buttocks of male ballet dancers on the cover of Joni Mitchell's latest CD, Shine. That album photo featured dancers from the Alberta Ballet in mid-leap, reaching towards a figurative moon. The folks at Hear Music, in either one of the most blatant acts of corporate homophobia in recent memory or one of the oddest cases of classicalballetphobia, slapped a huge blue band over the offending portion of the image, literally extending from butt to butt.

After that Dark Slide piece was picked  up by the Washington Post's Reliable Source column, the folks at Starbucks denied anything was at work other than increased sales visibility. But given that Starbucks was also selling a re-issue of Blue at the time, Mitchell's most famous album, which features even harder-to-read type, and given I've yet to see any other CD sold at Starbucks contain a similar band, my reaction to their defense was not surprising: nonsense.

That episode had a humorous undercurrent at least. The thought of a bunch of executives in some corporate office trying to figure out ways to prevent young children from being exposed to dance is kind of funny. Avert your eyes, young hot chocolate drinker, a classical art form is on display!!

This time it's not so simple to just say that we live in an ever more puritanical society, and that corporate end runs like this are par for the course. Rudy Giuliani tried an end run around an art-going public when he tried to single-handedly shut down a provocative exhibit at  the Brooklyn Museum years ago. And right here in Washington, the Corcoran Museum cancelled an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe's work in 1989, causing one of the great uproars in recent art history. (Not to be outfoxed, area artists staged an end run of their own, projecting the banned images on the museums facade. It was one of the first things I covered at my new UPI job that year.)

In the case of the Student Gallery contest, the end run was based  on one man's desire to protect young artists from, well, themselves. Well-intentioned, perhaps, but misguided, for sure. Bruce Bradley, the publisher of the Virginian-Pilot, cited the inappropriateness of the two winning pieces of art. In a story in his own paper (and to be fair, the V-P has not shied away from covering the controversy) Bradley said, “While it’s true we don’t specifically address this in the rules and regulations, the concern I had was to have a 17-year-old girl do a self-portrait of herself in the nude. I thought that was inappropriate for the contest."

There's a neat little non-sequitur in there, if you pay careful attention. The conclusion, "I thought that was inappropriate for the contest," doesn't really follow the preceding statement, that is, "the concern I had was to have a 17-year-old girl do a self-portrait of herself in the nude." That doesn't have anything to do with the contest. That's the real issue for Mr. Bradley, as if he has the power to decide what a talented young artist should or should not be painting or sculpting or photographing. Years ago, I had an assignment to photograph the national winners of the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and I was floored by the maturity and expertise of the entries.

When I wrote about the Joni Mitchell cover fiasco, I remember feeling sheepish in having to explain that the dancers were really wearing tights, even though they appeared to be nude, because it felt like I was being forced to explain something on the level of a third-grader. It's like trying to explain a complicated passage of literature on an internet message board: Abandon Hope. But reluctantly, I'll do the same here, just for clarity's sake. The two winning entries that were disqualified by the Virginian-Pilot are accomplished, serious pieces of art--they're not pornographic, not erotic and most definitely not"racy," as one newspaper reader commented on the paper's site, clearly without ever having seen the art in question. If you think this striking ceramic bust by Jasmine Childs is "racy," I'm guessing you probably haven't been to a lot of museums or been exposed to very much art in your life. And of the other winning painting by Nancy Reid, Ann Dearsley-Vernon, a former education director of the Chrysler Museum, told the Virginian-Pilot's Teresa Annas that it was, "sweetest, least-revealing nude. There’s nothing showing."

Once again, it feels silly to be discussing the nuances of what is and what is not art. But it also seems silly that we are discussing this case at all. Military recruiters routinely make presentations to high school students about joining the services, and I'm not weighing in for or against that practice. But if a high school student is mature enough to consider the prospect of fighting in a war, isn't he or she also mature enough to create serious art that involves the human form? As usual, our friends around the world, from Paris to Florence to villages all over Africa, places where art of the human body is ever-present, must be shaking their heads.

And remember, the  exhibition of Student Gallery winners is hung each year in a major American art museum, not the lunchroom of some elementary school filled with young children. This is a tremendous opportunity for a young artist--better, I dare say, than the chance area students have in this neck of the woods to design our Arlington County car tax decal each year. We've already become a society that doesn't seem to care when music programs are eliminated from the curriculum, where foreign language classes are taught by teachers with Phys. Ed. backgrounds, and student newspapers are routinely shut down for exercising free speech. We should be encouraging serious art students to express themselves seriously, not telling them that they need to avert their eyes at the sight of a--gasp!-- nude sculpture.

According to the Virginian-Pilot, Ann Dearsley-Vernon has commendably rallied other art lovers in the area to come up with the $1,000 Reid would have received had her prize not been revoked. And while the editor of the Virginian-Pilot has pledged to make the rules more explicit--no pun intended--for next year's contest, the Chrysler should instead look to break away from a free-speech organization that seems to be a bit ashamed of free speech.

Now that would be a neat end run.

 Matt