After the Christian Action Network sponsored an exhibit of NEA art in the Capitol, featuring tax-subsidized artists such as Joel-Peter Witkin and his photograph "Testicle Stretch with the Possibility of a Crushed Face," House Speaker Tom Foley sent uniformed guards to dismantle it after having been open for fifteen minutes.

Witkin, who uses corpses as his medium, has also displayed "still lifes" of a head on a plate as a vase containing a flower arrangement and a dead baby surrounded by grapes. Another of Witkin's photographs, "Le Baiser" ("The Kiss"), featured an old man's head that had been cut into left and right halves. The two halves were then turned together so they touched and photographed to appear as though they were kissing.

Witkin's corpses were acquired—it's unclear exactly how—from the anatomy department of the University of New Mexico Medical School. Upon learning of his activities, University officials dissociated themselves from Witkin, who then looked south to Mexico to purchase the corpses—not exactly what NAFTA supporters had in mind.

[Ed.: Sculptor Anthony-Noel Kelly was arrested in London in April, 1997, for assembling a thoroughly derivative work involving 30 human body parts that may have been obtained illegally.]

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