Guggenheim Defends Controversial New Exhibit

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The Guggenheim museum is on the defensive this week after animal rights activists faulted multiple works in a forthcoming exhibit for mistreating animals.

Opponents of the new show, "Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World," are particularly critical of a piece that includes video footage of four pairs of dogs facing off against each other while on self-powered treadmills. In the seven-minute video, the dogs run toward each other but are unable to touch, according to a Change.org petition calling for the piece's removal.

"The dogs get wearier and wearier, their muscles more and more prominent, and their mouths increasingly salivate," the petition says.

The Guggenheim defended the piece, titled "Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other," and clarified that the the dogs in the footage were never involved in any dogfighting. The footage is from the artists Peng Yu and Sun Yuan, and was shot at staged performance at a Beijing museum in 2003, according to the Guggenheim.

The work "is an intentionally challenging and provocative artwork that seeks to examine and critique systems of power and control," museum officials said in a statement on Thursday. "We recognize that the work may be upsetting. The curators of the exhibition hope that viewers will consider why the artists produced it and what they may be saying about the social conditions of globalization and the complex nature of the world we share."

The Change.org petition also says the exhibit will include a separate video of two pigs that were tattooed and later taped mating in a 1994 Beijing exhibit. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

In addition, one of the show's main works, which inspired the name "Theater of the World" is filled with "hundreds of live reptiles and insects" which "devour each other over the course of the show," according to a description of the show on the Guggenheim website. The caged arena is described as "teeming with life and littered with carcasses" by the Guggenheim. The piece, by artist Huang Yong Ping, was previously installed in Vancouver in 2007, before it was removed after the city's humane society objected,according to CBC News.

The museum did not address the insect and reptile show or the pig footage in their statement on Thursday.

The petition, which had amassed nearly 45,000 online signatures as of Friday evening, faulted the Guggenheim for an "assault on animals in the name of art." The exhibit is scheduled to open on Oct. 6.

Image credit: Stephen Chernin / Stringer / Getty Images News