The 25-foot tall (7.6 meter) sculpture of a shark crashing through the roof of Magnus Hanson-Heine’s house in rural Oxford, England, is now a protected landmark — and he’s not happy about it. — The Associated Press
City Council members in Oxford voted earlier in the month to add the protest artwork to its Heritage Asset Register along with 16 other sites.
Officially named the Headington Shark, the sculpture was installed on the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki in 1986 as a powerful anti-war message lobbed against the U.S. government by American ex-pat homeowner Bill Hanson-Heine and local artist John Buckley. Hanson-Heine died in 2019 and apparently passed down his grudge against the planning body, which had for years attempted to effect last night’s removal via a series of orders that were eventually halted by Department of the Environment Minister Michael Heseltine in 1992.
“Using the planning apparatus to preserve a historical symbol of planning law defiance is absurd on the face of it,” Magnus told the AP earlier this week.
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