Museums of ancient art have had a difficult time of late: Facebook and Instagram index the images of the most important works of art, and right-wing and ultra-religious people also want to protect their offspring from the corrupt influence of Michelangelo and the Old Masters. A case in Florida has just caused a stir after a school principal was fired after parental protests for showing her students Michelangelo's David sculpture from Florence - the most important sculpture in art history.

From the point of view of these people, Florian Knauß should direct a kind of porn show, because his antiquities collection and especially the Munich Glyptothek house works from Greek antiquity, Hellenism and Roman times, which are teeming with nudity, breasts, private parts and depictions of coitus. The presumably most voluptuous masterpiece of antiquity can also be found in his house: the world-famous Barberinian faun, who lolls almost obscenely towards his viewers.

Dr. Knauß, what do you think as an archaeologist or art historian when a picture of Michelangelo's "David" is classified as harmful to young people in Florida?

I hardly shake my head anymore. Unfortunately, this news joins a multitude of strange reactions to contemporary as well as ancient art. This can become threatening if it becomes capable of winning a majority, which it is not yet. But since works from our collection have been indexed on Facebook, we take it quite seriously. The Barberinian faun shows his genitals far more offensively than does Michelangelo's David. We can hardly advertise with him on social media anymore.

How pornographic was antiquity?

The misunderstanding is already in the offing. If nudity alone is considered offensive, I would indeed have to oversee a collection of pornographic art. In ancient times and actually in all times when one was halfway sane, nudity was part of the expression of art. It was also known back then that what was being shown was not commonplace. You didn't run through the streets naked, except when you were doing sports. The Greeks differed from other civilizations in which men were only shown naked as vanquished. The Greeks held the naked man in high esteem because they associated a well-formed, fit body with an excellent character. Gods and heroes were physically perfect.

Why did so many ancient statues have small penises?

It was a question of decency. Heracles, for example, who towered above all others in terms of physical strength and manhood and was admired by both men and women, was always shown with a small penis. In vase painting, the cabaret, one also sees figures with large and often erect limbs, such as the companions of Dionysus. But they were also extraordinary persons, outside the human sphere, one could easily portray them as such.

Do these depictions provide information about the moral concepts of the time?

In a way yes. A decent bourgeois woman was never depicted naked, she was even perfectly dressed, her hair done. Only from the late classic period there were naked Aphrodite depictions, after all she was the goddess of desire and fertility. There is also the notion of heroic nudity. Men were always shown naked in battle, although in reality they weren't, of course, and it would have been stupid. There are pornographic depictions in cabaret, especially on vases, which tell us about binge drinking, for example at the end of a symposium. Then there were prostitutes. The noble man was entitled to this and is shown without shame. But not in public space. We have a group of Roman sculptures in the collection that probably came from a brothel.

Has an observer ever taken offense at this?

I am not aware of any. That was different in earlier times.

For example?

In the late 19th century, people began distributing fig leaves. It's an up and down. The ancient Greeks were more relaxed about naked bodies than we are today. But the Romans and the Etruscans already found that offensive back then. The Romans and Etruscans found it outrageous that the Greeks practiced sports naked.

During the Renaissance, nudity became fashionable again, and Michelangelo's David was also created. But as early as the Council of Trent between 1545 and 1563, Christianity began to find repugnant what had just recently been expressly ordered by the Vatican.

That's right, suddenly even Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Church were painted over, earthly aprons were put on the naked figures of the "Last Judgment". Only since the 1990s has it almost returned to its original state. Cranach and Dürer also obediently painted fig leaves on every lap.

Considering the history of reception of nudity, how free and liberal are we today in comparison?

Unfortunately, the voices of those deploring freedom of movement are increasing. Even in Europe and North America, as the current case shows. Not just among religious conservatives, or Muslims, whose sense of shame might be offended, but also by people who find it objectionable for other reasons. At the same time, one is ambiguous, because it is demanded that women are allowed to swim bare-chested in the swimming pool, while at the same time nudity in art is problematic.

In 2018, a museum curator had an 1896 painting by John William Waterhouse removed in the wake of the "Me Too" debate. It showed the ancient youth Hylas with bathing nymphs. What do you say to that?

For us, rejection from the reactionary or religious side is less threatening than the demands to remove historical works of art from view because they may be considered misogynistic today or depict other ethnic groups in a way that is considered outdated. Of course, many historical works of art convey a chauvinistic, Eurocentric world view, because that was the time they came from.

But it's also confusing. In the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, every child can look at the painted close-up of a vulva in Courbet's "L'Origine du Monde", in a Jeff Koons retrospective young people are not allowed to see his explicit pictures with Cicciolina.

It's also not clear to me where which benchmark is applied. In ancient times, it was easy to distinguish between ideal nudity and pornographic depiction. Today, at souvenir stalls in Athens, you can find masses of replicas of antique vases with erotic motifs on offer, while the number of authentic vases with such drastic motifs is infinitesimally small.

In 2016, during a visit by the Iranian ayatollah Rouhani, the ancient figures in the Roman Capitol Museum were veiled. Would you comply with such a request as a museum director?

No, I think that's fundamentally wrong. Also because it paints a wrong picture of these cultures. The ayatollahs are not uneducated, they can definitely classify what they see - and have the freedom not to go there.

Munich is the favorite city of many Muslim tourists from the Arab world, and many a sheikh lives in the state capital all summer. How do they react to the many stony nudities in the cityscape?

It is noticeable that we hardly have any visitors from this group in the Glyptothek. The "Charles Hotel", which is preferred by many guests from the Arab world, is only a stone's throw away from our museums. It's obvious that we'll be shunned from that direction. I have no problem with that, every guest should look at what he wants. There must be no restrictions on artistic freedom. Nudity in art is an expression of our culture and our cultural tradition.

Have you ever encountered rejection from visitors to the Glyptothek?

No. But apart from children, there are hardly any people who are surprised by the art. I would even go so far as to say that people who are interested in ancient art are often educated and open-minded. If you're educated, you can handle a few naked figures - and children hardly have any reservations anyway.