Artist fired for dumping bust

Copenhagen – The head of Denmark’s top art school has been sacked over the drowning of a bust of a former king in a Copenhagen canal, the culture ministry said yesterday.

Artist Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld lost her job when she took a replica bust of the 18th-century monarch Frederik V from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where she was employed, and dumped it to draw attention to the country’s colonial past.

Dirckinck-Holmfeld was removed from her post the day she came forward as the responsible party.

The scandal yesterday claimed the scalp of the Academy’s director Kirsten Langkilde, who had sent an internal mail with a link to the video of the bust being dumped without any comment, just saying “Have a good weekend”.