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 ( news - web sites ) and former President Clinton ( news - web sites ), 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 ( news - web sites ) 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.