Arts grant awarded for buttocks sculptures

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SWANSEA, Wales, June 28 (UPI) -- A Welsh artist says she has gotten $33,000 to create plaster casts of women's buttocks in a bid to get to bottom of cultural attitudes about female fannies.

Sue Williams, of Swansea, Wales, will use the money from the Arts Council of Wales to mould a series of plaster casts of women's bottoms, starting with her own, to examine the "racial fetishism" of the backside in African and European societies, The Times of London reported Sunday.

"The project is taking on the issues around the bottom and how it is viewed in contemporary culture and viewed by the male," she said. "For example, it is quite clear that the bottom is sacrosanct to the African man and woman."

The arts grants are funded by lottery sales and are supposed to be used for "good causes." One member of the British Parliament questioned whether Williams' sculptures qualify.

"No doubt there are some people who consider this a good cause, but the majority of people buying lottery tickets are bound to question this," Adrian Sanders, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, told The Times.