Russia’s Museum Culture War

“Culture wars over blasphemous art, such as Andres Serrano’s urine-dipped crucifix or Chris Ofili’s elephant dung-decorated Madonna, have flared up periodically in the United States in recent years. A similar conflict is now raging in post-Soviet Russia. But there, the debate is not about whether taxpayer money should be used for museum displays that offend some people’s religious beliefs. It’s about whether a provocative exhibition at a privately owned museum should be a crime with harsh penalties for the accused blasphemers.”