Inflatable dog turd sculpture escapes Swiss museum, wreaks havoc
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 | 11:54 AM ET
CBC News
A powerful gust of wind recently swept a house-sized sculpture of dog feces from its display outside a Swiss museum, an art official in Berne said Monday.
The incident took place on the night of July 31, but details of the artwork's escape — and the havoc it caused before its eventual landing — emerged just this week.
The massive inflatable sculpture, created by U.S. contemporary artist Paul McCarthy and titled Complex Shit, is part of the Paul Klee Centre's exhibit East of Eden: A Garden Show.
McCarthy's piece was displayed outdoors, among "weird and wonderful objects [forming] an animated kind of front garden," according to the museum website.
The sculpture is usually contained by a safety system that deflates it during instances of bad weather. However, the system failed on this occasion and the work escaped from the Klee Centre's garden, museum director Juri Steiner told Agence France-Presse.
The wind carried the work away, knocking down a power line and breaking a window at a nearby orphanage before falling to the ground about 200 metres from the centre.
The museum had yet to contact McCarthy about the incident, Steiner said. Officials are also contemplating whether to return the piece to display.
