EXHIBITION PRESUMES INNOCENTS at CAPC BORDEAUX: Manifesto of THOSE PRESUMED GUILTY We are deeply surprised and shocked by the announcement that Henry-Claude Cousseau, Marie-Laure Bernadac and Stéphanie Moisdon are to re-appear before the magistrateâs court of Bordeaux, France. They have been prosecuted since 2000 in connection with the exhibition Présumés Innocents (at the CAPC Musée dâart contemporain de Bordeaux) , even if the Public Prosecutor requested a non-lieu in March 2008. In view of the list of works incriminated (by Elke Krystufek, Gary Gross, Ines van Lamsweerde, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Ugo Rondinone, Marlène Dumas, Paul McCarthy , Carsten Höller, Robert Mapplethorpe, Eric Fischl ,Mike Kelley, Matt Collishaw, Christian Boltanski , Cameron Jamie, Joseph Bourban, and Wolfgang Tillmans), the fact is that we have on many occasions shown and reproduced these same works or identical pieces, and that in the context of our profession we have every intention of continuing to do so in all legality. This legal action is based on a single hypothesis : that these works might have been seen by minors, and this in spite of all the warning arrangements carefully displayed. So will it henceforth be necessary to deprive our young people of access to contemporary culture, even when young people visiting exhibitions are usually supervised by their parents or teachers Who will duly take decisions involving these measures controlling and limiting what can and cannot be shown Are art images to be regarded as dangerous, or more dangerous than those freely circulating in the press and media This trial, unique in France, is an attack on contemporary creative work. In a more fundamental way, it affects our functions, our responsibilities, our rights and our freedoms. The disproportion and the cost of the legal machinery in the absence of any offence, as well as the exploitation of childhood resorted to by an association supposed to protect young persons, are signs that things are headed in a direction which worries us, and which we regard as unworthy of France and its cultural policy. As heads of art institutions and exhibition venues, distributors, publishers, artists and intellectuals, we are solidly behind our colleagues now on trial, and we ask to be similarly tried as a result. You are invited to express your solidarity to our colleagues.