A controversial bust of the whistleblower Edward Snowden gets a public airing in Brooklyn this month after the New York Police Department seized the piece. Last April, artists Jeff Greenspan and Andrew Tider fused the four-foot, 100-pound bust of Snowden to a pillar within the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park. “It would be a dishonour to those memorialised here to not laud those who protect the ideals they fought for, as Snowden has by bringing the National Security Administration’s 4th-amendement-violating surveillance programmes to light,” the artists said in a statement. The bust was dutifully removed by the NYPD; the artist duo subsequently retrieved the work after paying a $100 fine. The bespectacled statue was shown at the Postmasters gallery in New York last summer, and went on show yesterday (17 February) in Agitprop!, an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum (until 7 August). Let’s hope the provocative portrait is not confiscated this time.
