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“In early March, a few days after armed rebels forced Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office, vandals ransacked a Port-au-Prince art museum and burned dozens of paintings along with 86 rare vodou dolls that were part of an exhibit marking the country’s 200th anniversary of independence.” But elsewhere in Haiti, new art is being created…

It’s time for the Elgin Marbles to go home. For Britain’s sake. “The marbles in the British Museum are performers, trained as actors in a ceremony. But this is not the Panathenaic Procession. It is a Great British ceremony, about an imperial splendour which thought of itself as universal rather than merely national. In the Duveen Gallery, within the British Museum, these figures no longer deliver Athens any more than the bagpipers who tramp round banquets at Windsor Castle deliver Scotland. They are guests from Greece who became so well known during the 19th century that they were adopted into the family.”

The Art gallery of Ontario is into crunch time lining up resources to build its $196 million renovation/expansion. “The next five months are decidedly crucial, especially if the 93-year-old art museum in downtown Toronto, variously described as the eighth-, 11th- and 13th-largest art institution in North America, is to meet its objective of breaking ground on Gehry’s design in March, 2005.”

FBI investigations of Buffalo artist Steve Kurtz for “bioterrorism” have stretched from Seattle to Pittsburgh, and involve anyone who has worked with the artist. What the feds don’t seem to realize is that artists working in biological material is becoming popular. “All these artists are doing is investigating biology using the same parameters as pure science, It’s a niche at the moment, and it’s very, very alive and it’s going to grow more so.”

Artists are refusing to testify in the grand jury bioterrorism investigation of Buffalo artist Steve Kurtz. “At least six people who were called to testify before the grand jury in the Kurtz case Tuesday refused to appear, invoking their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.”

Two FBI agents came to the Henry Gallery at the University of Washington recently to ask curators about artist Steve Kurtz, the subject of a grand jury investigation into bioterrorism in Buffalo, N.Y. Kurtz had a show at the Henry. “I don’t know what I was expecting from the FBI, but they asked incredibly inflammatory questions. … I remember one of them asked, ‘If you heard there was an explosion in Buffalo that killed 100 people and Steve Kurtz was involved, would you be surprised?’ I said, ‘Yes, of course, there couldn’t be an explosion involving Steve. He’s an artist, not a terrorist.’ “

Does the Visual Artists Rights Act need to be revisited? “New law often has unintended consequences, and VARA, which was intended to resolve conflicts between artists and private collectors, has set off disputes between the rights of artists and those of building owners. Most of the artwork involved is owned by people who really aren’t collectors. They tend to be government officials or the buyers of buildings, who are not aware of the art law’s restrictions.”