Bush Monkeys, a small acrylic on canvas by 23-year-old artist Christopher Savido of President George W. Bush, at an exhibition in New York?s Animal gallery.

The portrait (left), which used monkeys to form Bush?s image led to the closure of the art exhibition at the Chelsea Market in Manhattan over the weekend and protests on Monday over freedom of expression.

The show ? originally scheduled to stay up for the next month? featured art from the upcoming issue of Animal Magazine, a quarterly publication featuring emerging artists.

?We had tonnes of people, like more than 2,000 people show up for the opening on Thursday night,? said show organiser Bucky Turco. ?Then this manager saw the piece and the guy just kind of flipped out. ?The show is over. Get this work down or I?m gonna arrest you,? he said. It?s been kind of wild.?

Turco took the show down on Saturday and moved the art work to his small downtown Animal Gallery. Calls to the management of Chelsea Market for comment were not returned.

From afar, the painting offers a likeness of Bush, but closer up it reveals that the image is made up of chimpanzees or monkeys swimming in a marsh.