Foreign Aid Money Spent on $23 Million Art Ceiling at U.N. Human Rights Council
Twenty three Million Dollars. The amount of money spent on one mural painted in the Geneva headquarters of the United Nations Human Rights Council. And it was paid, in part, from money from foreign aid funds.
In a ceremony attended by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Spanish artist Miquel Barcelo told the press that his 16,000-square-foot ceiling artwork reminded him of "an image of the world dripping toward the sky".
"In Spain there's a controversy because they took money out of the foreign aid budget — took money from starving children in Africa — and spent it on colorful stalactites," said Hillel Neuer,executive director of U.N. Watch.
According to Fox News, "Spanish taxpayers paid for most of the sprawling sculpture, which has been compared to the Sistine Chapel, but around $633,000 came from Spain's budget for overseas development aid".
The same building, which is the U.N.s' European Headquarters in Geneva, is supposed to be undergoing a $1 Billion renovation. But, it won't be done until completion of the U.N.s' New York headquarters offices are renovated at a cost of $1.9 billion.
Call it nitpicking, but I find this an appalling waste of money spent by an organization constantly pleading for more funding to help starving children, disaster victims, and peacekeeping missions around the world. And they still manage to find enough money to send a human rights observer to the United States to ensure Barack Obama got a fair shake in our election.
BAH!
23 million for that? You got to be kidding me. Reminds me when the Canadian art museum bought a piece of work for 3 million called "The Voice of Fire". Two colours and three vertical stripes. How the heck do we get out of this boondoggle plagued corrupt institue.
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ok, it's been 9 or 10 days since news broke on this and I am STILL completely repulsed by this expenditure. And the art itself.
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I love Justin Bieber
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how to determine the sex of a child?
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I would like to see continued...
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