Months ago, a bronze sculpture of President Donald Trump stood on the fringes of the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
This week, the same work reappeared in France with a fresh coat of gold leaf, and this time it stands inside a legislature.
Danish artist Jens Galschiot created the eight-foot figure, which he titled “The Orange Plague.”
A left-wing member of the European Parliament invited the piece to Strasbourg, where it now occupies a major thoroughfare connecting the chamber’s offices.
The sculpture went up Tuesday. The Parliament’s schedule calls for it to come down Thursday, so the display runs only a few days.
Galschiot’s design shows Trump naked. He grips a golf club and the scales of justice at once, and a second male figure carries him on his shoulders.
At the unveiling, the artist tied the work to his political views.
Galschiot said: “Trump represents one of the greatest threats to the rules-based world order, democratic values and our common effort to solving the climate crisis”
He made those remarks as the statue went on view in the Parliament complex.
Anyone who visits the statue before its removal receives a small keepsake. The Daily Telegraph reported that organizers are handing visitors maquettes, scaled-down models of the sculpture.
Barbara Bonte, a Member of the European Parliament from the Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang, answered the installation publicly. A right-wing populist, she posted her reaction on X.
Bonte wrote: “What a disgrace. A gold-plated, naked Donald Trump… The people who lecture the world on dignity can’t even manage basic respect for the president of a friendly nation.”
She also described the display as a political message presented as art. Her post named no one in particular, but it addressed the lawmakers behind the installation.
Per Clausen, an eco-socialist Member of the European Parliament, took the opposite side. Clausen said Trump should take the caricature on the chin.
He went further and said the president would be “thin skinned” if he refused to do so.
The two lawmakers sit in the same Parliament, yet they reached opposite conclusions about the same object. Bonte called it a failure of respect, while Clausen treated it as a joke the president should accept.
The statue arrived in Strasbourg with a history. Earlier this year, it appeared on the edges of the Munich Security Conference, outside the main proceedings.
That earlier version looked different. It had not yet received its gold leaf gilding, so viewers in Germany saw it entirely in bronze.
The gilded finish now covers the figure in Strasbourg, and the surface catches the light along the thoroughfare where staff and lawmakers walk between offices.
The sculpture belongs to no single venue. Galschiot’s work travels, and the Parliament installation is a temporary stop rather than a permanent acquisition.
By Thursday, the statue is scheduled to leave the corridor. The maquettes, however, will remain in circulation, since each visitor who collects one carries the design out of the building.
