Jeff Greenspan and Andrew Tider
– Artist’s Website –
A bust, once busted, is now moving to theBrooklyn Museum.
A statue of Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower living in exile in Russia, confiscated last year by police from Fort Greene Park is joining an exhibit dedicated to artwork and social change, the museum said.
The Snowden bust will move to the Sackler Center for Feminist Art on Feb. 17 as part of the second phase of the months-long “Agitprop!” exhibit. It, along with work by 20 artists, will join the show celebrating “the legacy and continued power of politically engaged art,” a statement on the exhibit read.
The 4-foot-tall bust, officially titled “Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument 2.0,” was erected inside Fort Greene Park at dawn last April by a group of then-anonymous artists, Jeff Greenspan and Andrew Tider.
The artists said in a statement at the time that the original Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in the park is “a memorial to American POWs who lost their lives during the Revolutionary War” and that they chose to update the monument with Snowden’s image “to highlight those who sacrifice their safety in the fight against modern-day tyrannies.”
Within hours, the Snowden statue was removed by local police. But Greenspan has no regrets about that, he told the Brooklyn Paper, who first reported on the bust’s appearance at AgitProp.
“The police removing it brought it to attention of people who might not have known about it,” he told the paper.
Following its removal from the park, the Snowden statue briefly made an appearance at a Williamsburg gallery last May.
The statue will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum until Aug. 7, museum staff said. For more information, visit the exhibit’s website.
