Art Dies at MoMA

One of the main artworks in the Museum of Modern Art's current exhibition, "Design and the Elastic Mind" — a tiny jacket composed of embryonic stem cells taken from mice — has died, the Art Newspaper reported yesterday.

The piece, "Victimless Leather" by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, was designed to remain "living" throughout the exhibition, which opened February 24 and runs through May 12. The collection of stem cells was fed nutrients by tube, but expanded too quickly and clogged its own incubation system within five weeks of the exhibition's opening.

The head of MoMA's architecture and design department and curator of the show, Paola Antonelli, had to turn off the life-support system for the work, essentially "killing" it. But the decision wasn't easy. "I've always been pro-choice and all of a sudden I'm here not sleeping at night about killing a coat," she told the paper.