Greek MP Vandalizes 'Blasphemous' Artworks at National Gallery

On Monday, Nikolaos Papadopoulos, a member of the far-right Niki party in Greece, defaced four artworks at The National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum in Athens. He, along with an accomplice, took the pieces off the wall, threw them to the floor, and stomped on them. The damaged works were contemporary engravings by Christophoros Katsadiotis, specifically Icon 1, Icon 16, Icon 17, and Saint Christopher, featured in the exhibition The Allure of the Bizarre, which coincided with a display of 80 engravings by Francisco Goya. Following the incident, the museum closed temporarily, and police detained Papadopoulos, whose lawyers argued that his arrest was unlawful without parliamentary consent. The Niki party, which has ten seats in the 300-seat parliament, promotes a fundamentalist Greek Orthodox agenda. Politicians from various parties condemned the act, with New Left calling it "a brutal act of disrespect, regression and medievalism," asserting that Niki revealed its "true face" as a threat to democracy and culture.