Italy seized a disassembled church by an artist that was headed to New York

Rome - Italian customs officials thwarted at the last minute a project by artist Francesko Vezzoli, who deconstructed a small village church piece by piece and wanted to rebuild it during his upcoming exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. At the Gioia Tauro port on Friday, eleven containers, into which the church had been loaded in parts, were seized at the request of the prosecutor's office. According to the ANSA agency, the operation was ordered due to suspicions of illegal export of a cultural monument.
    Forty-two-year-old Vezzoli is one of the most well-known and controversial contemporary visual artists in Italy. In New York, he intended to present a complex project in which the small church from the Calabrian village of Montegiordano played an important role. Vezzoli bought the partly destroyed sanctuary on the internet and gradually dismantled it. He planned to reassemble it on Long Island in New York, where the PS1 gallery, a branch of MoMA, is located. His video art creations were supposed to be projected onto the walls of the church.
    The residents of Montegiordano were not enthusiastic about the artistic intention and tried to prevent the export of the church. However, Vezzoli claimed that it was merely a "temporary loan" on his part and that he would bring the church back and reassemble it in its original location after the exhibition.