San Antonio Police investigating bomb explosion damaging Lenin statue

Police in San Antonio are investigating an explosion that happened at a statue of Russian communist revolutionary Vladmir Lenin outside the Texas Public Radio offices. The explosion took place on the head of Lenin.

Officials said on Monday morning that smoke could be seen and an explosion was heard at some point on Sunday night.

The sculpture, titled “Miss Mao Trying to Poise Herself at the Top of Lenin’s Head,” was installed earlier this year, after previously being showcased in Vancouver, and was created by Chinese artists and brothers Gao Zhen and Gao Qian.

Liz Burt, a spokesperson for the nonprofit organization Centro San Antonio, told Texas Public Radio that the statues are actually meant to be “anti-communist” as the artists who made them suffered much at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.

“We’re deeply saddened,” Burt said, adding: “It’s actually anti-communist … if you read about it, if you read about the artists and their struggles. They’ve lost parents to dictatorship and communism. And given the world that we’re in, I would hope that there would be support on public art and art that really is about conversations, specifically hard ones.”

No one was hurt in the explosion and police have now sealed off the building.

A San Antonio Fire Department spokesman confirmed to Fox News Digital that its Arson Bureau was investigating a criminal mischief incident.