Police investigating Lenin statue vandalism outside Texas Public Radio offices

Police in San Antonio are investigating an explosion that occurred at a statue of Russian communist revolutionary Vladmir Lenin’s head outside the Texas Public Radio offices.

Officials explained Monday morning that smoke was seen and an explosion was heard at some time Sunday night.

The sculpture, titled “Miss Mao Trying to Poise Herself at the Top of Lenin’s Head,” was installed earlier this year and was created by Chinese artists and brothers Gao Zhen and Gao Qian and is a critique of the Chinese Communist Party, but officials suspect the vandals may have known that.

“We’re deeply saddened,” Liz Burt, a spokesperson for the nonprofit organization Centro San Antonio, told Texas Public Radio. “It’s actually anticommunist ... 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.”

The radio station does not own the statue or the land it is on.

No one was injured in the incident.