The Daily Telegraph

Guggenheim defends its right to show animals eating each other

- By Hannah Strange in Bilbao

SPAIN’S Guggenheim museum is to press ahead with the exhibition of two controvers­ial Chinese artworks featuring animals which it had withdrawn from its gallery in New York after fierce protests.

Last year, the Guggenheim in New York succumbed to pressure to remove the installati­ons – one featuring live reptiles and insects, some of which eat each other, and another a video of two pigs copulating – from the exhibition Art and China after 1989: The Theatre of the World.

However, the gallery has defended its right to freedom of expression after deciding to include the artworks when the 150-piece show comes to the Guggenheim in Bilbao from May 11, a move which has drawn the ire of animal rights campaigner­s.

One of the works, Huang Yong Ping’s The Theatre of the World – after which the exhibition is named – features two cage-like structures containing toads, snakes, lizards, tortoises, beetles, cockroache­s and other insects. Another, Xu Bing’s A Case Study of Transferen­ce, shows a boar and a sow covered in Eastern and Western symbols copulating in front of a crowd of people.

More than 823,000 people have signed a Change.org petition begun before the New York show demanding the works be pulled.

Representa­tives of the Bilbao Guggenheim say the decision to display the works is about defending freedom of expression at a time when it is increasing­ly under threat.

Begoña Martínez Goyenaga, a spokesman for the gallery, said there was no cruelty involved in the installati­ons, which she insisted met all legal standards on the treatment of animals. She said the museum understood that some would be opposed to the display, and respected their right to protest. But, she insisted, Guggenheim Bilbao had an “obligation” to protect artistic creation.

“Freedom of expression is in danger these days,” Ms Martínez said, adding that the world was seeing a “regression” in the fundamenta­l liberties which were the basis of “healthy democracy”.

In the case of The Theatre of the World installati­on, a team of specialist­s had been brought in to ensure the well-being of the specimens, and that their conditions were as similar as possible to their natural habitat, she explained. She confirmed that “as happens in nature”, some of the smaller creatures would be eaten by predators.

Animal activists and local Left-wing politician­s have taken a different view. Udalberri, a Leftist coalition in the Bilbao city government, said animals should be left in their natural habitats.

Amaia Arenal, an Udalberri councillor and art historian, said that the Guggenheim was “speaking of liberty of expression and of respect for free artistic creation to justify this piece, freedom which we always defend when it does not have negative consequenc­es for third parties”.

She added: “We don’t think that an installati­on in a museum is an adequate place for these living beings to be able to live according to their needs, even more so when prey and predators share space inside the installati­on.”

Pacma, a Spanish animal rights party, also criticised what it said was the conversion of living beings into “objects”.

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