Vilks not welcome in Kalmar

The "round-about-dog" artist Lars Vilks stirs controversy again, this time in Kalmar.

Under the headline "Art Censorship", Swedish radio's Culture News programme today, Nov 24th, reports that the board of Kalmar Art Museum has turned down an idea to have a retrospective exhibition of Lars Vilks' art. It was the chief of the Kalmar Art Museum, Mr Klas
Börjesson, who suggested that the museum exhibit works by Lars Vilks from the mid-seventies to 2006. That would mean that the controversial Mohammed pictures would NOT have been included. But the board of the museum turned down the idea by implying that Vilks was not good enough. "No one else has done a retrospective on Vilks", said the chairman of the board dryly to Swedish radio.

Vilks' notoriety has thereby rendered him, and his fans, the possibility to always cry foul and hit people with "the freedom of expression"-argument whenever his works are turned down. Whether his art is any good or not, is today a secondary matter.

/SK