Actress Brooke Shields is shown Sept. 28, 2008 at the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards. A photo of her at age 10, when she was a child star, is at the centre of a controversy at the Tate Modern. (Reed Saxon/Associated Press)

A nude photo of actress Brooke Shields at the age of 10 has been removed from an exhibition at the Tate Modern art gallery in London because of a police probe.

London police visited an exhibit of works by U.S. painter and photographer Richard Prince on Wednesday in what they said was a pornography investigation.

Prince's Spiritual America shows Shields from the knees up, naked, oiled and wearing make-up.

The Tate said it has shut the room where Spiritual America, scheduled to open Thursday, is on display and also stopped the sale of an exhibit catalogue.

"The room is temporarily closed and we are in discussions with the police at the moment," a Tate spokeswoman said.

Police investigators said they were working with gallery staff to ensure no laws were broken.

"The officers have specialist experience in this field and are keen to work with gallery management to ensure that they do not inadvertently break the law or cause any offence to their visitors," Scotland Yard said in a statement.

The exhibit of works by Prince, known for his "rephotography" in which he takes photos of works by other people, is part of a wider exhibit called Pop Life: Art In A Material World.

Police are also looking at other sexually explicit images in the exhibit.

Prince's work is a photograph of a photograph originally taken by American Garry Gross in 1975.

Gross's photograph was the focus of a 1983 child pornography probe in the U.S., in which a judge found it was not pornographic.

"The photo has been infamous from the day I took it and I intended it to be," Gross told the Daily Telegraph.

Shields, who played a child prostitute in Pretty Baby at the age of 12, was a child star and model who appeared in several provocative ads in the 1970s when she was still a teenager.