Head of Italian museum displaying 'blasphemous frog' sacked

The head of an Italian museum who offended the Pope by exhibiting a wooden sculpture of a crucified frog has been sacked amid a debate over artistic freedom.
By Nick Squires in Rome
30 Oct 2008

Corinne Diserens, the Swiss director of the museum in Bolzano, in the mountainous north-east of Italy, was dismissed after months of controversy over the bright green, bug-eyed amphibian, which is nailed to a cross and holds a frothing mug of beer and an egg.

Picture of the offending frog

She had refused to remove the work by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger despite protests from the Vatican that it was blasphemous.

She said the museum had a right to artistic freedom, and kept the frog on display as originally planned from May to September.

But a majority of the museum's board of directors disagreed and instead dismissed her this week. the rest