MUSEION DEFIES POPE ON KIPPENBERGER FROG

An Italian museum rejected a request from Pope Benedict XVI to remove a sculpture of a crucified green frog, Reuters reports via the New York Times. The work, which depicts the frog holding a beer mug and an egg, was condemned by the Vatican as blasphemous. The board of the Museion Museum, in the northern city of Bolzano, decided by a majority vote that the wooden sculpture, by the German artist Martin Kippenberger, would stay in place for the remainder of the exhibition in which it is included. The Vatican wrote a letter of support in the pope’s name to Franz Pahl, the president of the regional government, who opposed the sculpture. “This decision to keep the statue there is totally unacceptable,” Pahl said. “It is a grave offense to our Catholic population.” Alois Lageder, the museum’s president, said the decision to continue to display the statue was made to “safeguard the autonomy of art institutions.” For more of Artforum.com’s coverage on this ongoing controversy, click here.