Council censors veiled Statue of Liberty

An exhibition of art using Muslim imagery has been censored by a local authority worried that two pictures might provoke violence. The show, called Veil, was to open at the New Art Gallery in the West Midlands town of Walsall today.

But Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council insisted that two digitally manipulated photographs be removed from the show. The organisers, the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva), were holding talks with the council last night.

The photographs are part of a series called The Witness of the Future: Islamic Project, by a Russian art collective called the AES art group. They add "Muslim" details to images of Western buildings. In one, the Statue of Liberty is veiled and holds the Koran and elsewhere the Houses of Parliament are seen with a domed roof.