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The work was part of Norwegian artist Lene Berg’s show “Stalin by Picasso, or Portrait of Woman with Mustache,” which went on view October 29 and was to run through December 6. In response to the removal of the banner, Berg asked the school to close the exhibition, which also consisted of two videos and two book projects.

The decision to remove the banner came after complaints to the city’s buildings department, prompted in part by the Ukranian community in the nearby East Village. The banner was removed last Friday, apparently without consulting Berg or Sara Reisman, associate dean of Cooper Union’s School of Art and the curator of the exhibition.

“I didn’t get any explanation of what happened,” Berg said.

“In a sense, I think it’s self-censorship on their part.”

Berg pointed out that Picasso’s image was initially viewed as unsympathetic to Stalin. Commissioned by the writer Louis Aragon for publication in a Communist weekly newspaper, the drawing was viewed as caricatural and drew widespread condemnation from French Communists.

Cooper Union defended its action by saying that the buildings department pointed out that the school did not have a permit for the banner. The school also said that if the city grants a permit to reinstall the banner, it will not be hung until after November 15 as a “gesture of respect for our neighbors”; that date marks the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of a Stalin-imposed famine that resulted in the death of millions of Ukrainians.