RUSSIAN prosecutors are investigating whether the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg is guilty of extremism after hosting an exhibit by the British artists Jake and Dinos Chapman.

Prosecutors said they had received 114 complaints from visitors to the exhibit, mainly complaining that it insulted their religious beliefs.

The Chapman brothers’ End of Fun opened in the Hermitage in late October in a new wing devoted to modern and contemporary art. It features glass cases full of figurines, some depicting scenes of extreme violence, with Nazi insignia and a crucified Ronald McDonald. Critics applauded the 248-year-old museum’s decision to put on the show.

The museum’s director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, criticised the investigation and the creeping conservatism in society. “This is the cultural degradation of our society,” he told journalists in St Petersburg. “There is nothing sacrilegious here, but a clear desire to ruin the mood in our city.”

St Petersburg, Russia’s cultural capital, has borne the brunt of a state-driven effort to boost conservative religious and social values.

In October a prominent curator, Marat Guelman, said he was forced to cancel an exhibit called Icons featuring religious symbols after city authorities requested its opening be postponed, something he saw as an attempt at censorship.

“This is happening in St Petersburg because obscurants there feel the support of the authorities,” Guelman said, pointing to the region’s deeply conservative and religious governor, Georgy Poltavchenko, a close ally of Vladimir Putin.

“These are people who do not accept the language of art.”  — The Guardian, London