美国国家公共电台 NPR Guggenheim Pulls Animal Art From Upcoming Chinese Exhibition

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AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Late last night, the Guggenheim Museum in New York announced it was pulling three works from an upcoming show of contemporary art from China. One is a large screen-covered box with live lizards¹ and insects inside. The other two are videos of animals. The museum's decision came after pressure from animal rights activists². Rick Karr has more.

RICK KARR, BYLINE³: Curators had selected around 150 pieces for the Guggenheim's upcoming show "Art And China After 1989: Theater Of The World." One of them was a video of a performance the artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu staged at a Beijing museum in 2003 titled "Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other."

(SOUNDBITE OF DOGS BARKING)

KARR: Online footage of the performance shows pairs of dogs facing each other harnessed to stationary⁴ treadmills⁵ and encouraged to run at each other. Ben Williamson of the group People for the Ethical⁶ Treatment of Animals, which demanded the piece be pulled from the show, says neither it nor the other two works deserve to be called art.

BEN WILLIAMSON: They are essentially⁷ acts of cruelty to animals masked as creativity. PETA objects to the use of all animals in art. This should by now be a no-brainer.

KARR: An online petition calling for the removal of the three works drew more than half a million signatures. The Guggenheim announced it was pulling the pieces from the show because it had received, quote, "explicit⁸ and repeated threats of violence." A Guggenheim spokesperson says the museum made the NYPD aware of the threats. But PETA's Ben Williamson is unsympathetic.

WILLIAMSON: If anyone has said something harsh or threatening to the museum, it's really an indictment⁹ of the museum that they didn't change due to rational discourse¹⁰ and peaceful public appeals in the first place.

KARR: But Suzanne Nossel of the human rights group PEN America says the circumstances surrounding the withdrawal¹¹ of the pieces should give animal rights activists and everyone else pause.

SUZANNE NOSSEL: Next time, people who object to art feel, OK, we're not going to be satisfied until this work gets pulled. And I think that is a worrisome development because you can imagine all kinds of controversy¹² sparking that kind of intense protest.

KARR: The remaining pieces in "Art In China After 1989: Theater Of The World" will go on display next week. For NPR News, I'm Rick Karr in New York.

(SOUNDBITE OF BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB SONG, "EL CUARTO DE TULA")