Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 21, 1995 TAG: 9501230064
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW HAVEN, CONN LENGTH: Medium
The Smithsonian Institution has cut off public access to a collection of nude photos taken of generations of college students, some of whom went on to become leaders in U.S. culture and government.
All freshmen at some Ivy League and other elite colleges were required to pose in the buff. Among those subject to the ritual were first lady Hillary Clinton and ABC-TV's Diane Sawyer, who attended Wellesley; and former President Bush and New York Gov. George Pataki at Yale University. It's not clear whether their photos are in the collection.
Students at Harvard, Princeton, Vassar and Swarthmore also were immortalized.
The Smithsonian never has displayed the pictures. They previously had been available only to students and researchers.
The frontal and profile ``posture'' photos were taken beginning in the early 1900s as part of physical education classes, because poise and balance were considered an integral part of health.
Later, the photographs were taken by W.H. Sheldon, who believed there was a relationship between body shape and intelligence and other traits.
Sheldon's work has since been dismissed by most scientists as quackery. But it apparently was respected from the 1940s through the 1960s, because the colleges allowed Sheldon access to their students. Sheldon now is dead.
Much of Sheldon's work was destroyed by various schools years ago. An article in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday disclosed that the Smithsonian still had a collection.
George L. Vogt, a member of the Yale Class of 1966 and director of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, said that Sheldon's written records of his scientific pursuit, however odd, should be saved, but that the photos should be burned.
``Our naked butts are in the Smithsonian,'' Vogt said. ``I can understand why the Smithsonian would want to record the quack science of the time, but I cannot understand nor can I accept that they would retain naked photographs of living people.''
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