LONDON—Spiritual America, the controversial Richard Prince photo that had been shown as part of the Tate Modern’s "Pop Life" exhibit, has been removed from display and replaced with a later version of the photo, Spiritual America IV. The original, taken in 1983, pictured a nude, 10-year-old Brooke Shields. IV shows the adult Shields clad in a brown bikini. Exhibition catalogs containing the image have also been pulled from public access.

The photo was removed under order of the Metropolitan police, who insisted that the Tate was showing an “indecent” image of a child, an offense under the Protection of Children Act of 1978. They warned that failure to remove the piece could result in museum administrators being automatically added to the sex offenders register.

But many say the police acted too aggressively. Said art lawyer Mark Stephens, “With exhibitions in cultural institutions [it] can rarely, if ever, be in the ‘public interest’ to prosecute.”

Read more at the Art Newspaper.