Caution: Censorship

A Moscow court has declared an exhibition of paintings and sculptures to be "openly insulting and blasphemous." The curator and director who dared to show "Caution! Religion" have been slapped with fines, which, while preferable to the years of imprisonment in a penal colony called for by the prosecution, still sets an unhappy precedent for the future of Russian art.

Days after the show opened, six men from an Orthodox church vandalized the exhibit, a crime apparently less offensive than displaying it. None of the men were convicted.

Cathy Young discusses the whole mess here.

Pictures of the vandalized works are here.