Aby Rosen takes heat for his Damien Hirst

The 33-foot sculpture at Rosen's Old Westbury estate has his neighbors in an uproar

From left: Damien Hirst, Aby Rosen and The Virgin Mother sculpture currently at Rosen's estate
From left: Damien Hirst, Aby Rosen and The Virgin Mother sculpture currently at Rosen's estate

WEEKENDEDITION RFR Holding’s Aby Rosen is once again provoking both art lovers and the conservative tastes of the well-to-do, but this time in Old Westbury.

Rosen is currently displaying Damien Hirst’s The Virgin Mother, a 33-foot-tall anatomical sculpture of a young pregnant woman, at his Old Westbury estate in Nassau County.

Even village mayor Fred Carillo has come out against the sculpture, calling it, “out of character with the neighborhood,” according to New York Magazine.

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“We have to appease the residents, they have to preserve their bucolic views. The question is, does it belong in Old Westbury? Does it belong on a residential property?” Carillo asked.

Hirst describes his sculpture as a reference to Degas’s Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, saying it “is kind of naughty; she shouldn’t really be pregnant. I wanted a feeling of that. Anyone who is pregnant looks old enough, that’s the problem.”

Rosen recently draped the sculpture. [NYM]Christopher Cameron