The Florence museum housing Michelangelo’s Renaissance masterpiece the David on Sunday invited parents and students from a Florida charter school to visit after complaints about a lesson featuring the statue forced the principal to resign. Florence Mayor Dario Nardella also tweeted an invitation for the principal to visit so he can personally honor her. Confusing art with pornography was “ridiculous,” Nardella said. The board of the Tallahassee Classical School pressured Principal Hope Carrasquilla to resign last week after an image of the David was shown to a sixth-grade art class. The school has a policy requiring parents to be notified in advance about “controversial” topics being taught. The incredulous Italian response highlighted how the U.S. culture wars are often perceived in Europe, where despite a rise in right-wing sentiment and governance, the Renaissance and its masterpieces, even its naked ones, are generally free of controversy. Sunday’s front page of the Italian daily publication Corriere della Sera featured a cartoon by its leading satirist depicting David with his genitals covered by an image of Uncle Sam and the word “Shame.” Carrasquilla believes the board targeted her after three parents complained about a lesson including a photo of the David, a 5-meter tall (17 foot) nude marble sculpture dating from 1504. The work, reflecting the height of the Italian Renaissance, depicts the Biblical David going to fight Goliath armed only with his faith in God. Carrasquilla has said two parents complained because they weren’t notified in advance that a nude would be shown, while a third called the iconic statue pornographic. Carrasquilla said in a phone interview Sunday that she is “very honored” by the invitations to Italy and she may accept. “I am totally, like, wow,” Carasquilla said. “I’ve been to Florence before and have seen the David up close and in person, but I would love to go and be a guest of the mayor.” Cecilie Hollberg, director of the Galleria dell’Accademia, where the David resides, expressed astonishment at the controversy. “To think that David could be pornographic means truly not understanding the contents of the Bible, not understanding Western culture and not understanding Renaissance art,” Hollberg said in a telephone interview. She invited the principal, school board, parents and student body to view the “purity” of the statue. Tallahassee Classical is a charter school. While it is taxpayer-funded and tuition-free, it operates almost entirely independently of the local school district and is sought out by parents seeking an alternative to the public school curriculum. About 400 students from kindergarten through 12th grade attend the three-year-old institution, which is now on its third principal. It follows a curriculum designed by Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan frequently consulted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on educational issues. Barney Bishop, chairman of Tallahassee Classical’s school board, has told reporters that while the photo of the statue played a part in Carrasquilla’s ouster, it wasn’t the only factor. He has declined to elaborate, while defending the decision. “Parents are entitled to know anytime their child is being taught a controversial topic and picture,” Bishop said in an interview with Slate online magazine. Several parents and teachers plan to protest Carrasquilla’s exit at Monday night’s school board meeting, but Carrasquilla said she isn’t sure she would take the job back even if it were offered. “There’s been such controversy and such upheaval,” she said. “I would really have to consider, ‘Is this truly what is best?’” Marla Stone, head of humanities studies at the American Academy in Rome, said the Florida incident was another episode in escalating U.S. culture wars and questioned how the statue could be considered so controversial as to warrant a prior warning. “What we have here is a moral crusade against the body, sexuality, and gender expression and an ignorance of history,” Stone said in an email. “The incident is about fear, fear of beauty, of difference, and of the possibilities embedded in art.” Michelangelo Buonarroti sculpted the David between 1501-1504 after being commissioned by the Cathedral of Florence. The statue is the showpiece of the Accademia, and helps draw 1.7 million visitors each year to the museum. “It is incredibly sought-after by Americans who want to do selfies and enjoy the beauty of this statue,” Director Hollberg said. The museum, like many in Europe, is free for student groups. There was no indication that any trip would be subsidized by the city or museum.

Why build a rooftop water tank in the shape of a Teletubby? Or go to the effort of installing a replica of the Eiffel Tower atop a semi-abandoned building? It’s often difficult to explain the proliferation of unusual artwork dotting the vast urban belt of some 11 million people outside Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires. In this immense swath of tree-lined neighborhoods co-existing with areas of chaos — apparently built with little if any urban planning — many residents have erected grandiose, eyebrow-raising surprises. The creators are usually construction workers or shop owners, although some artists are seeking to leave their signature in their neighborhood. Pedro Flores defines the outskirts of Buenos Aires as a “post-apocalyptic paradise” close to the capital’s center. He and two friends run an Instagram account, “The Walking Conurban,” a play on the words “conurbano bonaerense,” as the roughly 40 municipalities are known in Spanish. The page publishes images daily of these suburbs, often tinged with a bit of magical realism: a dinosaur on the dirt streets of a poor neighborhood; two Minions dolls greeting people from a home; a Statue of Liberty in the middle of a pasture. Here are some of the works The Associated Press visited. THE EIFFEL TOWER On a rooftop at the corner of a street in the town of La Tablada stands a replica of the Eiffel Tower. Miguel Muñoz, 58, proudly explains how his father, a blacksmith, built it out of leftover iron with the guidance of brochures from the French embassy. “He gave it to me on my birthday, that’s why I don’t sell it,” Muñoz said.The tower is a symbol in the neighborhood. “I took it down once to paint it and the neighbors went crazy thinking someone had stolen it,” Muñoz said. Read: Argentina keen to exporting soybean, fertilizer to Bangladesh THE KETTLE On the terrace of a two-story house stands a large water tank in the shape of a kettle, like the ones used by Argentines to make their beloved tea-like infusions known as mate. It was built in 1957 by Italian immigrant Victorio Smerilli and some relatives. “They decided to do it as a replica of the ‘Victor’ kettle they sold in a store located downstairs in this same house,” said Gustavo Smerilli, the immigrant’s grandson. Adriana Paoli runs an art workshop in the building and she is pushing a project to restore the kettle. “If I say, ‘I have my workshop in the kettle,’ everyone knows the place,” she said. STATUE OF LIBERTY In the municipality of General Rodríguez, behind a humble house, a replica of a Statue of Liberty rises above a field where horses and cows graze. The 15-meter- (49-foot-) high structure is a leftover from the “Liberty Motocross” circuit operated there years ago, the caretaker of the property, Pablo Sebastián, said. GORILLA OF THE BOAT HOUSE Sitting peacefully on a rock, next to a door of a boat-shaped house in the town of San Miguel, the gorilla Pepe drinks from a mate gourd. The creator of the house and the gorilla statue is sculptor and painter Héctor Duarte, who died in 2020. Duarte’s family has received offers to buy the cement sculpture, but they refuse to sell. BUSTS OF EVITA AND JUAN PERÓN In the patio of the same house where Pepe the gorilla presides, Duarte’s busts of Juan Domingo Perón, three-time president of Argentina, and his wife, Eva María Duarte, can be seen embracing. Duarte’s family lends the sculptures out for official ceremonies. MONTE GRANDE WATER TANK The enormous water tank in Monte Grande’s main plaza became a work of art in 2020 when, at the municipality’s request, artist Leandro García Pimentel painted a mural on it depicting fire, earth, air and water. The water tank has become a meeting point and public ceremonies, and newlyweds pose in front of it for photos. Read: Bangladesh, Argentina to strengthen economic ties; MoU on FOC signed DINOSAUR On a street in front of bricklayer Daniel Niz’s house, in the poor Sol de Oro neighborhood in Ezeiza, a dinosaur greets visitors. “My son wanted a rubber (dinosaur) and it was expensive, so I decided to make this out of recycled things and materials,” Niz said. He previously had the dinosaur on a patio inside his house but he decided to put it outside so people could take photos of the 1.2-ton structure. HAND OF GOD WATER TANK A water tank made to look like a large hand holding a soccer ball stands on the roof of a house in the La Cumbre neighborhood on the outskirts of La Plata, recalling the famous goal Diego Maradona scored with his hand against England in the 1986 World Cup. It was designed by a deceased mason who was well known to locals. COLOSSEUM, TOWER OF PISA and ARCH OF TRIUMPH Replicas of these European masterworks in the municipality of Ituzaingó were carried out by artist and architect Rubén Díaz, who is considered a “generator of fantasies.” Díaz’s goal is in part to let his neighbors “travel” to places they would normally never see. The Colosseum, which is 200 square meters (2,153 square feet) and 8 meters (26 feet) high, recreates the Roman amphitheater. The Argentine version of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is 11 meters (36 feet) high and has the late comedian Carlitos Balá immortalized on one side. Meanwhile, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is located in the front garden of a private property. Díaz has proposed building the Great Wall of China in 2023. HOMER’S GRILL Homer Simpson, the father from the TV series “The Simpsons,” smiles and holds up his thumb from atop the aluminum roof of a restaurant in the town of Ciudadela. On the front of the restaurant, which serves cuts of grilled meat, is the silhouette of Maradona running with a ball. TELETUBBY WATER TANK Po, the red Teletubby with the circular antenna, smiles as she surveys a long and busy highway. But Po isn’t just there for decoration — she is the lid of a building’s water tank in the town of Ciudadela. Read: Argentina plans to open Dhaka embassy Ignacio Castro, who rents the apartment just below the tank, said that when he was about to move in he found the head of the character of the famous children’s show in the kitchen. He gave it to his uncle but the owner of the building demanded it be returned. FIGURES OF IMMIGRANTS Also in Ciudadela, some 20 human-scale figures appear in a row in the entrance garden to the home of Antonio Ierace, an Italian immigrant who arrived in Argentina in 1949 and worked as a bricklayer. As a hobby, he designed statues dedicated to migrants, including a man carrying two suitcases, and homages to workers such as hairdressers and blacksmiths. HOUSE WITH THE TRANSFORMERS In the town of Adrogué, gardener Juan Acosta cuts the grass in his yard where there are six robots that resemble Transformers from the 1980s U.S. television program. Passersby can see the Transformers from the sidewalk. “Curious people take photos daily,” Acosta said of the robots made from recycled materials.

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Tuesday expressed unwillingness to talk about the current sculpture controversy as he thinks it is not an issue for their party.

 

Still in his first week as State Minister for Religious Affairs, Md Faridul Haque Khan on Tuesday reiterated the point he pushed on his very first day: idols and sculptures are two different things, and focusing a discussion on the topic can resolve the misunderstandings that have come to the fore on this.

Newly-inducted state minister for religious affairs Md Faridul Haque Khan on Sunday said there is a difference between a sculpture and idol, and sculptures are there in almost all the countries of the world.