Jacobsen, Carol

Artist, associate professor of video and photography in the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan; awarded grants from Amnesty International and the National Endowment for the Arts for work done pertaining to women, criminalization, and censorship; curator of "Porn'Im'age'ry: Picturing Prostitutes" the controversial exhibit at the University of Michigan Law School in October 1992.

The exhibit contained images of and by prostitutes and was "pro-prostitute, pro-sex, and pro-porn", according to Jacobsen. A videotape installation that included "Outlaw Poverty, Not Prostitutes" by Carol Leigh, "Portrait of a Sexual Evolutionary" by Veronica Vera, "The Salt Mines" by Susanna Aiken and Carlos Aparicio, "Transvestite Hookers" and "My Own Private Seattle" by Randy Barbados, and "Street Sex" by Carol Jacobsen was removed after objections were made to its contents. Ultimately the entire exhibit was forcibly removed, resulting in a year of legal negotiations between Jacobsen, Marjorie Heins (ACLU), and Dean Lee Bollinger (UM Law School) over the legality of censoring the exhibit. The exhibit was reinstalled in October 1993.

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