LONDON - Britain's famous Tate Modern art museum removed a provocative nude photograph of 10-year-old Brooke Shields after Scotland Yard warned that the image might violate obscenity laws, according to a report in the Guardian. Police officers went to the museum after reading about it in the newspapers. A Scotland Yard source told the Guardian the visit was a matter of "common sense" to pre-empt any breach of the law. The image was actually a photograph of a photograph which was at the center of a legal battle when Brooke tried to buy all the negatives and stop it from being published. She lost the case because her mother had allegedly given permission for the photo shoot.

The 1983 image from Richard Prince's "Spiritual America" exhibition shows Brooke standing naked in a bathtub with oil all over her body, wearing makeup and staring into the camera.

Museum officials confirmed that the display is "temporarily closed down" and that they have stopped selling the exhibit catalog for the time being.

At the Tate exhibition, it is displayed alone in a special room with a notice on the door warning visitors that they may find the image "challenging," according to a report in the Daily Mail.

The image actually is a photograph of a 1975 photograph taken by Gary Cross. The original photograph was allegedly taken with Brooke's mother's consent. Brooke and her mother went to court in 1981 to try to get the negatives, but the judge ruled that the earlier agreement between Cross and her mother was binding, according to the New York Daily News.

Children's advocacy groups are up in arms about the London Tate show. Kidscape founder Michele Elliott said:

          ...To masquerade [this] under the guise of edgy art is ridiculous. It is soft kiddy porn.

          Putting a sign on the door like that means every pedophile in the land will head straight to that room."

Officials at the Tate gallery said they had given careful consideration to the photograph before including it in the show:

          As with any artwork that contains challenging imagery, Tate has sought legal advice and evaluated the situation. Tate has taken
          measures to inform visitors of the nature of the work, providing information outlining the intentions of the artist.

          This is an important work by Richard Prince which has been publicly exhibited on a number of occasions, most recently in Richard
          Prince's major retrospective, Spiritual America, at the Guggenheim in New York."

What the Tate failed to mention is that Prince's show at the Guggenheim in New York put the same photo in the immediate context of other exploitive advertising images, but the photo at the Tate stood out of context in its own room, in the immediate vicinity of explicit sexual pieces featuring adults.

The Art Knowledge News editor adds this update to the Brooke Shields story ... now a mother ... and still a beautiful woman at age 44.

Postnatal depression, divorce and an ‘alcoholic stage mum from hell’ – there’s no wonder Brooke Shields had a breakdown. If it’s taught her one thing, though, it’s how not to treat her own children.

Being labeled 'The Most Beautiful Woman in the World' was always going to be something of a burden for Brooke Shields.

That was the title she was given back in 1982 when the 16-year-old graced the covers of more than 30 glossy magazines following roles in hit films such as The Blue Lagoon and Endless Love.

Today, the 44-year-old actress's beauty has softened into something deeper, and when she looks at pictures of her younger self, her thoughts turn to her two young daughters, Rowan, five, and Grier, two.

'Obviously, I think they're the most beautiful creatures in the world,' she says.

'But I try not to tell them that all the time. I say things like, "You're smart" or "What a big girl you are!" or "What wonderful manners you have!"

I'm starting them young to try to instill in them the sense that there's something more to life than what's on the outside.'

All this, of course, is a far cry from Brooke's own childhood: her showbiz-obsessed, alcoholic mother, Teri, allowed Brooke to pose naked when she was just ten. At 12, she played a child prostitute in Louis Malle's film Pretty Baby. At 14, she was on the cover of Vogue. In 1978, when Brooke was just 13, her mother said, 'Like any beautiful painting, I think the world should enjoy Brooke and view her.'

After suffering depression for years, becoming older and wiser is something Brooke relishes, 'I feel older when I look in the mirror, but not aged,' she says.

But getting to this point in her life has been a pretty rocky ride. Brooke is now almost as well known for the postnatal depression she suffered after Rowan's birth as she was in the 1980s for her virginal beauty.

'Some of what you go through with postnatal depression is so absurd that I can only laugh about it now. The scary thing was how rational I felt. It wasn't dramatic. It was very matter-of-fact and made perfect sense. That was what was so devastating, It was as if I'd been bodysnatched.'

The previous five years had been turbulent to say the least.

She had divorced tennis star Andre Agassi; her best friend David Strickland, her co-star in the US television series Suddenly Susan, had committed suicide; her father, Frank, had died from pancreatic cancer, and she had struggled to become pregnant with second husband, writer and producer, Chris Henchy.

Certainly, taking into account a showbiz career that began with a TV commercial when she was 11 months old, the wonder is that Brooke didn't go off the rails earlier.

She cannot remember a time when she wasn't famous or when her mother wasn't driving her on.

As a baby, Teri strapped Brooke to her body every night with a cloth nappy. During frequent alcoholic binges, she would wake Brooke up in the middle of the night just so she had someone to talk to. 'We were like one,' says Brooke. 'For the longest time, the only voice in my head was hers. I was in my 20s before I realized who my mother really was – and that turned my whole world completely upside down.'

Brooke took a break from acting in 1983 to study French Literature at Princeton University. But, four years later, roles were sparse and unmemorable. I found, when I left university, that I was very famous, but didn't have work to support that fame,' she says.

Since then, she has clawed her way back, largely thanks to her Golden Globe-nominated role as Susan Keane in the hit US TV comedy series 'Suddenly Susan', and her performances in musicals such as 'Chicago', 'Grease' and 'Cabaret'.

'I've been very lucky,' she insists. 'This is a very fickle business. Success is not always directly proportionate to talent. To me, it's about longevity, and I really appreciate it every time I'm invited back to join the party again.'

But, in a sure sign that the demons of postnatal depression are truly behind her, it is her role as mother that now comes first in her life.