San Francisco Art Institute Closes Show That Enraged Animal-Rights Groups

The San Francisco Art Institute shuttered a Paris artist’s one-man show Saturday after receiving a series of threats related to videos in the exhibition that showed animals being bludgeoned to death. The institute also canceled a public forum about the show that it had scheduled after complaints began pouring in.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, animal-rights groups compared the show to “a snuff film about animals,” as a spokesman for one of the groups put it. Officials of the art institute said that the video footage showed animals being slaughtered for food in Mexico, and that the videos were part of a social critique by the artist, Adel Abdessemed. But the newspaper said the exhibition itself did not give any context for the videos. The institute received more than 8,000 e-mail messages protesting the show.

Chris Bratton, the art institute’s president, said in a news release that an “orchestrated campaign” by animal-rights groups had led to a “parallel onslaught of explicit death threats and threats of sexual violence — as well as racial, religious, and homophobic slurs — against SFAI staff members and their families,” forcing the institute to close the show. —Lawrence Biemiller