When I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this past weekend, I was shocked to see a painting that depicts a young girl in a sexually suggestive pose. Balthus' painting, Thérèse Dreaming, is an evocative portrait of a prepubescent girl relaxing on a chair with her legs up and underwear exposed. 
 
 It is disturbing that the Met would proudly display such an image. They are a renowned institution and one of the largest, most respected art museums in the United States. The artist of this painting, Balthus, had a noted infatuation with pubescent girls, and it can be strongly argued that this painting romanticizes the sexualization of a child. 
 
 In 2013, the Met hosted the exhibit "Balthus: Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations," which included more of Balthus' overtly pedophilic work. As the Guardian wrote: "The Met, not imprudently, has put a plaque at the start of the show that reads: "Some of the paintings in this exhibition may be disturbing to some visitors." If The Met had the wherewithal to reference the disturbing nature of Balthus for this exhibit, they understand the implications of displaying his art as a part of their permanent collection. 
 
 Given the current climate around sexual assault and allegations that become more public each day, in showcasing this work for the masses without providing any type of clarification, The Met is, perhaps unintentionally, supporting voyeurism and the objectification of children. 
 
 
 
 
 
 I am not asking for this painting to be censored, destroyed or never seen again. I am asking The Met to seriously consider the implications of hanging particular pieces of art on their walls, and to be more conscientious in how they contextualize those pieces to the masses. This can be accomplished by either removing the piece from that particular gallery, or providing more context in the painting's description. For example, a line as brief as, "some viewers find this piece offensive or disturbing, given Balthus' artistic infatuation with young girls." 
 
 Ultimately, this is a small ask considering how expansive the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection is (they can easily hang up another painting), how overtly sexual the painting is (the Met's description of the piece provides no background on Balthus or his reputation), and the current news headlines highlighting a macro issue about the safety and wellbeing of women of all ages. 
 
 
 
 Please sign this petition if you agree that the Met needs to reconsider the way it is displaying Balthus' suggestive, Thérèse Dreaming. I will be sending a letter to the museum alongside these signatures. ||||| New Yorkers launched a petition demanding that the Metropolitan Museum of Art remove a 1938 painting of a young woman with her underwear exposed due to the “current climate around sexual assault” — but the Met refused Sunday. 
 
 The piece, “Thérèse Dreaming” by the French artist Balthus, “sexualizes” the girl by depicting her lounging in a skirt with her knee up on a chair, according to the petition, which was posted on the website Care 2. 
 
 “The artist of this painting, Balthus, had a noted infatuation with pubescent girls and this painting is undeniably romanticizing the sexualization of a child,” writes Mia Merrill, 30, a New York City entrepreneur who started the petition. 
 
 “Given the current climate around sexual assault … The Met is romanticizing voyeurism and the objectification of children.” 
 
 It proclaims, “The [Met is] a renowned institution and one of the largest, most respected art museums in the United States. 
 
 “I am simply asking The Met to more carefully vet the art on its walls, and understand what this painting insinuates. 
 
 “Ultimately, it’s a small ask in consideration of how expansive their art collection is … how overtly sexual the painting is, and the current news headlines highlighting a macro issue about the public health and safety of women.” 
 
 The petition, which launched Friday, had raked in nearly 7,000 signatures by Sunday evening. 
 
 But a rep for the museum said it won’t remove the painting because art is meant to reflect many time periods — not just the current one. 
 
 “[Our] mission is to collect, study, conserve, and present significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas,” said spokesman Kenneth Weine. 
 
 “Moments such as this provide an opportunity for conversation, and visual art is one of the most significant means we have for reflecting on both the past and the present.” 
 
 In 2013, the Met held an exhibition of Balthus paintings titled, “Balthus: Cats and Girls — Paintings and Provocations.” 
 
 When the erotic realist died in 2001, the lead singer of U2, Bono, sang at his funeral. The president of France and supermodel Elle Macpherson also attended the funeral. ||||| Art Bizarre Balthus show reveals artist's fixation with cats and young girls 3 / 5 stars More character study than retrospective, the Met's provocative new Balthus exhibition has an unsettling undertone 
 
 • Click here for more images from the Balthus show More character study than retrospective, the Met's provocative new Balthus exhibition has an unsettling undertone Thérèse Dreaming by Balthus, 1938. Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998 © Balthus 
 
 If current trends continue, in just a few years all of contemporary culture will be nothing but an unending stream of cat pictures. Newspapers desperate to survive will publish only adorable kitten photos; social networks will strain under the weight of shorthairs and Siamese. The art world is already getting in on the act: witness the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis hosting an internet cat video festival (it drew 10,000 viewers in one day), or White Columns, the avant-garde New York gallery, laying on The Cat Show, featuring "purr-formers in residence". The Brooklyn Museum recently rehung its august Egyptian collection in a display called "Divine Felines." 
 
 I wonder whether the Metropolitan Museum of Art had our contemporary cat mania in mind when it scheduled its smart, strange exhibition of the Polish-French painter Balthus – a figurative master in an age of abstraction, and one of the creepiest figures of modern art. You may know him as an anti-modernist with a taste for young girls. His love of cats, however, receives less attention, and in this cat-saturated moment that love might become the dominant one. 
 
 The first painting, on loan from Switzerland, is a remarkable, full-length self-portrait done at the age of 27. Balthus is wearing high-waisted yellow trousers and an abbreviated necktie, stepping forward seductively with his left foot while an obese tabby nuzzles his right. On the floor, a stone tablet bears an inscription in English: "A portrait of HM the King of Cats." He earned the title. In one almost psychedelic work, from 1949, a grinning feline of human proportions sits at a seaside cafe table; a school of fish jumps from the sea on to the cat's plate, trailing behind it a glorious rainbow. In another artist's hands this might feel tasteless. From Balthus, this is par for the course. 
 
 Cat's whiskers … Detail from Balthus's 1935 self-portrait, The King of Cats (1935). Photograph: Fondation Balthus, Switzerland © Balthus 
 
 Balthus, born Balthasar Klossowski on 29 February 1908, fell for both art and cats at an early age. At 11, devastated by the disappearance of a stray he'd taken in, the young artist produced 40 memorial ink drawings, each five inches square and done in a forceful black-and-white that recalls the woodcuts of German expressionists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. In the first drawing, the preteen Balthus, wearing shorts, finds the cat, Mitsou, on a park bench. Soon they're snuggling together in bed, walking through the streets (Mitsou prances on a leash), sitting by the Christmas tree. In the final scene Mitsou is gone and the boy is left alone in his bedroom, sobbing uncontrollably. 
 
 Drawing the line … the final ink drawing in Balthus's Mitsou series (1919, black ink on paper, 6 x 4 3/4 in). Photograph: Private collection © Balthus 
 
 The Mitsou drawings made it into print in 1921 with a preface by Rainer Maria Rilke, a friend of the Klossowski family and, by the way, one of the lovers of Balthus's mother. Confident, musical, sweet and grim by turns, these drawings – the originals are being shown publicly for the first time, and they're the best reason to see the show – are much more than Balthus juvenilia. They're the pistol shot that began one of the most mystifying, frustrating careers in 20th-century art. 
 
 He stood at the core of mid-century European culture, a mate of Picasso and Lacan, but despised much of what we now think of as the greatest achievements of modernism. (His brother Pierre Klossowski, subject of a fantastic show at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2006, was the more progressive figure.) He was a vile anti-semite, despite his own possible Jewish ancestry. Born into something like genteel poverty, he later styled himself as a count and told Alberto Giacometti that he "needed a château more than a workman needed a loaf of bread". 
 
 Recipe for concern … The Cat of La Méditerranée by Balthus (1949). Photograph: Private collection © Balthus 
 
 And, oh, he also had an inordinate fixation on girls who'd just hit puberty. "Little girls are the only creatures today who can be little Poussins," Balthus said late in life, and this show counterposes images of sly, knowing cats with ones of ostensibly innocent children. The Met, not imprudently, has put a plaque at the start of the show that reads: "Some of the paintings in this exhibition may be disturbing to some visitors." Only some visitors? They should disturb us all. 
 
 Thérèse Blanchard, his first muse (if you can use that word for a child), is shown reclining on a divan with her skirt hiked up, panties clinging to her inner thighs, while a cat sups milk from a saucer. Thérèse is depicted a second time, in bobby socks, splayed out on a bench and losing her balance. One girl is reading a book on the floor, her bottom hiked in the air; another lounges like an odalisque, gazing into a mirror while her bare leg dangles off a settee. 
 
 The girls are self-possessed and serious, and Balthus always denied any hint of paedophilia. But get real: these are erotic images of children. Some, especially the Thérèse portraits, show real invention and even a little humour that make them difficult to dismiss outright. Others, especially the mannered domestic scenes of his later career, are barely competent acts of voyeurism. Their inclusion here displays a welcome willingness on the part of the curator, Balthus specialist Sabine Rewald, to present the artist in full. 
 
 More a character study than a real retrospective, this show leaves out many of Balthus's most famous paintings to concentrate on two obsessions that end up rolling into one. Cats may seem anodyne fun to the legions of reblogging obsessives driving today's digital feline explosion. In Balthus's world, though, cats have a much more chilling flipside, and they stay with you long after the latest meme has faded.
– As one New York City institution wrestles with high-profile molestation accusations, another finds itself the target of outcry over the "sexualization" of a young girl—in a painting. The Metropolitan Museum of Art says it will not take down the 1938 painting "Thérèse Dreaming" by the French artist Balthus, though 7,000 people have asked that it do so via the petition site care2. The petition started by Mia Merrill describes the work as "an evocative portrait of a prepubescent girl relaxing on a chair with her legs up and underwear exposed," and calls it "disturbing" that the museum would knowingly display such a sexualized image in our "current climate." As for the knowingly part, she notes that the Met paired a 2013 exhibit of Balthus' work with a sign explaining some of the pieces could be "disturbing" to viewers. A 2013 Guardian article indicates "Thérèse Dreaming" was part of that exhibit. Merrill writes that "if the Met had the wherewithal to reference the disturbing nature of Balthus, they understand the implications of displaying his art." The New York Post reports the museum on Sunday said the painting would remain hanging, with a rep saying, "Moments such as this provide an opportunity for conversation." The museum's description of the piece notes that Thérèse Blanchard, Balthus' neighbor in Paris, was 12 or 13 when she was painted. The Paris Review reports the late Balthus was asked about the "provocative poses" he painted young girls in, and replied, "It is how they sit." In his review of the 2013 exhibition for the New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl had this to say: "I kept thinking of a line by Oscar Wilde: 'A bad man is the sort of man who admires innocence.'" (A US couple has been forced to give up their $1.75 million painting.)