Uninvited Artist Posts Work at 4 Museums

Uninvited Artist Posts Work at 4 Museums
By ULA ILNYTZKY, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - Paintings of President Bush and former President Clinton,
accompanied by messages referring to the artist's bodily fluids,
mysteriously appeared last week on the walls of two major city
museums and reportedly at two other museums in Philadelphia and
Washington.

Harold Holzer, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said
Wednesday that a cartoon-type painting of Bush against a background
of shredded dollar bills was found hanging Saturday on the wall near
an exit in the museum's modern art galleries.

"The Metropolitan is a repository for the greatest works of human
creativity over the last 5,000 years," Holzer said. "It is not a
bulletin board. For us, it is clearly an unwelcome demonstration of
self-aggrandizement."

The 9-by-15-inch work, done on a frameless canvas, was affixed to the
wall with double-sided tape. A label taped next to the painting said
it was made with "acrylic, legal tender and the artist's semen."

Apparently no one saw it being put up.

Similar paintings of Bush and Clinton were left Saturday at the
Guggenheim Museum. Police and FBI agents determined there was no
threat to the public, authorities said.

Also targeted were the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, the New York Post reported Wednesday.

Representatives of those three museums declined to comment or were
not immediately available when contacted by The Associated Press.

Citing an unidentified source, the Post said the intruder left
typewritten notes at all four locations that read: "I mixed my semen
in some acrylic gel medium and I painted it in the right hand corner
of this piece of art. It is an artistic reference to the silent power
of the biological sciences."

Although the museum screens visitors' bags, Holzer said the small
painting would not have raised any alarms and would not have been
confiscated, because many museum visitors go to the Met to sketch.