Greece pulls statues from Qatar exhibit over nudity dispute
Greece has pulled two ancient statues from an ongoing Olympic Games exhibition in Qatar in a dispute over nudity, a Culture Ministry source said on Tuesday.
“The statues have already returned to Greece,” a Culture Ministry source told AFP, adding: “Organizers in Qatar wanted to cover up the statues’ members with black cloth. So they were never put on display, they went back into storage and returned on April 19.”
The statues — a Classical Greek youth and a Roman-era copy of an athlete — are both nude, the manner in which Olympic athletes competed in antiquity.
Greece’s junior minister for culture Costas Tzavaras had traveled to the Qatari capital of Doha for the opening of the exhibit on March 27, saying it opened a “bridge of friendship” between the two countries.
According to the Culture Ministry, Greece has contributed nearly 600 exhibits from the National Archaeological Museum, the Numismatic Museum and the Museum of Olympia, birthplace of the Games.
The Doha exhibit runs to June 30. [AFP]
