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Serranos Work Smashed In Sweden

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Oct 09 2007 12:00am EDT

Serrano's Work Smashed in Sweden

When it rains, it pours.

Today, we hear from the New York Times' Carol Vogel that just two days before someone put a fist through Monet's The Argenteuil Bridge at the Musée d'Orsay, a group of thugs hacked up seven photographs in an exhibition of Andres Serrano's sexually explicit work at the Kulturen Gallery in Lund, Sweden, while reportedly screaming "We don't support this shit." The incident at the d'Orsay seems to have been a drunken shenanigan, but this was calculated and brazen: The crowbar- and ax-wielding thieves struck in broad daylight, with visitors in the gallery, and then posted a video of their raid on YouTube.

Serrano's work is provocative. What's surprising isn't that it was attacked, but where it was attacked. Sweden has a reputation for tolerance, liberalism, and a generally progressive agenda. It's puritanical Americans and stodgy Brits that are supposed to be easily offended by graphic images.

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