Vienna’s tourism board has started an OnlyFans account, moving onto the NSFW site in protest against artistic censorship on other major social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Many museums based in the Austrian capital have encountered problems stemming from these platforms’ guidelines when promoting their artworks in recent years. Back in July, the Albertina Museum’s TikTok account was suspended, then blocked, for showing images by Nobuyoshi Araki that included a partially-obscured breast. In 2019, meanwhile, Instagram claimed that a painting by Peter Paul Rubens violated community guidelines (despite those guidelines stating: “Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK”). 

The Leopold Museum has similarly run into issues surrounding its Egon Schiele collection, which was deemed too racy for ad campaigns in the US, UK, and Germany in 2018, even 100 years after the artist’s death. A video featuring Koloman Moser’s Liebespaar, made to mark the Leopold Museum’s 20th anniversary in 2021, was also rejected as “potentially pornographic” by Facebook and Instagram.

It’s not only modern art that has bumped up against social media restrictions, either. Back in 2018, the 25,000-year-old statue Venus of Willendorf was removed from Facebook after it was deemed pornographic, even after four attempts to appeal the decision.

Speaking to the Guardian about the OnlyFans launch, Helena Hartlauer, a spokesperson for the Vienna tourist board, says that the city and its institutions are finding it “virtually impossible” to use some of their best-known nude artworks in promotional materials. 

“Of course you can work without that,” Hartlauer adds. “But these artworks are crucial and important to Vienna – when you think of the self-portrait by Schiele from 1910, it’s one of the most iconic artworks. If they cannot be used on a communications tool as strong as social media, it’s unfair and frustrating. That’s why we thought (of OnlyFans): finally, a way to show these things.”

To encourage art lovers to head over to OnlyFans for “Vienna’s 18+ content”, and drive visitors back to the city after coronavirus closures, the first subscribers are set to receive a Vienna City Card or an admission ticket to see one of the artworks in a gallery.

Of course, artists are already all too aware of Instagram’s censorship of nudity, which — according to the image sharing platform’s community guidelines — even targets images that “are artistic or creative in nature”. In August, Char Ellesse, Enam Asiama, and Nyome Nicholas-Williams starred in a series of nude portraits, Exhibit, to highlight its restrictive rules, and their disproportionate effect on marginalised bodies.

“Compared to the artists who fall under this censorship, the tourist board in Vienna and even the art collections have it easier,” says Hartlauer, explaining that the OnlyFans project also aims to raise awareness of such restrictions.

“We just want to question: do we need these limitations? Who decides what to censor? Instagram censors images and sometimes you don’t even know about it – it’s very untransparent.”

OnlyFans has had its own fair share of controversy regarding NSFW content in recent months, following its announcement of a ban on “any sexually explicit content” back in August. Despite OnlyFans walking back the ban, adult creators remain sceptical about their future on the platform, and have rallied against the financial discrimination that prompted the planned changes.

You can find the official OnlyFans for Vienna’s tourism board here.