"Balloon Dog" by Jeff Koons. Photo by Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. artist Jeff Koons opened a controversial show in Paris this week at the Hercules salon in the Château de Versailles. From a gargantuan balloon dog to his famous porcelain statue of Michael Jackson and Bubbles, Koons "redecorated" Louis XIV's former hunting lodge inside and out. He even filled Marie Antoinette's room with vacuum cleaners. Of course, as NPR reports, some in France were not amused:

Koons' sculpted rabbits and dogs "don't belong at the palace of Versailles, they belong at Disneyland," said journalist and radio host Anne Brassie.

Arnaud-Aaron Upinsky, the president of a writers' union, agreed. "This exhibit is sacrilegious and insulting to the symbols of the Republic and its art," he said, wearing a velvet-and-gold-colored crown at the protest.

Here are some more unbelievable shots from the show:

"Lobster" by Jeff Koons. Photo by Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

"Hanging Heart" by Jeff Koons. Photo by Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

"Ushering In Banality" by Jeff Koons. Photo by Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

Junko Kimura/Getty Images

People walk past a half-body statue in Shibuya, Tokyo's main shopping area, on August 22. Online Game Company NHN Japan has set up a series of these statues to promote the mobile game site hange.jp. When people touch the statue's arm with their mobile phone, the application site will automatically open and a lucky winner will be rewarded 10,000 U.S. Dollars.

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Chinese policemen try to save a boy from being crushed by the crowd near a ticket booth at the Olympic Green on July 25 in Beijing, China. Starting today, the remaining 820,000 Olympic tickets, of which 250,000 are for competitions held in the capital city, became available for purchase by individuals at the Olympic venues.

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Scrap metal is piled up at a metal recycling facility on July 17 in Chicago, Illinois. With scrap metal prices near historic highs, many communities are experiencing an increase in thefts of metal including cemetery ornaments, plumbing pipe, gutters, and even manhole covers.

AFP PHOTO/DIEGO TUSON

A bull charges a woman off the port during the traditional bulls celebration on the seafront in Denia Alicante, Spain, on July 7.

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A fighting bull leaps over two fallen runners at the Mercaderes curve during the third San Fermin running of the bulls on July 9 in Pamplona, Spain. Fighting bulls are run through the historic heart of Pamplona for eight days in this fiesta made famous by The Sun Also Rises, the 1926 novel by U.S. writer Ernest Hemmingway.

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A Fuente Ymbro fighting bull gores French matador Sebastian Castella during the third corrida of the San Fermin festivities on July 9 in Pamplona, Spain.

Passport has the day off tomorrow for the July 4th holiday here in the United States, so here's an early Friday photo to contemplate. Enjoy your weekend!

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WASHINGTON - JULY 02: Eight-year-old Peter Wajda of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, poses for photographs on top of 10,512 sneakers tied by their laces and laid heel-to-toe in the courtyard at National Geographic Society headquarters July 2, 2008 in Washington, DC. Assembled by National Geographic Kids magazine, the string of shoes was certified Wednesday by Guinness World Records as the longest chain of shoes, measuring 8,700 feet or nearly 1.65 miles. Wajda, a third-grader at Moorestown Friends School, organized a shoe drive and collected 509 of the shoes used to set the record. The shoes will be shipped to Nike's Reuse-a-Shoe program and recycled into basketball courts and other play surfaces.

Here are some wild scenes from the ongoing beef protests in South Korea:

Photos by KIM JAE-HWAN/AFP/Getty Images

Apparently, the South Korean riot police have been working in shifts, as some of the most violent protests have happened overnight. The protesters failed to convince South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who moved Thursday to lift the ban on American beef. Read the backstory here.