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Trouble with the veterinary office: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
Photo: Christophe Gateau / picture alliance / dpa
The Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg has come under criticism for an installation in which flies are dying.
After a complaint from the animal rights organization Peta, the city's veterinary office issued a verbal warning to the museum.
By this time, star artist Damien Hirst's work had already been dismantled.
"We thought that flies were not covered by the Animal Welfare Act," museum director Andreas Beitin told the "Braunschweiger Zeitung".
In the exhibition »Power!
Light« was about drawing attention to the fact that insects die every night from public light.
The exhibition ends on Sunday.
"Killing animals has nothing to do with art, it just shows the arrogance of people who literally will stop at nothing for their own interests," said Peter Höffken of Peta.
According to the Animal Welfare Act, no one may harm or harm an animal without a “reasonable reason”.
"We share the basic idea of the animal protection organization that animals are not there to entertain us or that we exploit them," said the managing director of the art museum, Otmar Böhmer, the dpa news agency.
Hirst's work entitled "A Hundred Years" has been in his own collection since the 1990s.
Flies first hatch in a glass double cube – if they fly to the other part following the light, they die.
The larvae were bought in the fishing trade, Böhmer said.
Only a small part of the hatched flies remained in the installation in order to be able to present the basic message of the work.
The museum wants to contact the artist or his studio as soon as possible to clarify whether the installation can also be presented with artificial flies.
Otherwise it should never be exhibited again.
feb/dpa
