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Artists Investigated by Federal Government
By Gwendolyn Bradley
The U.S. government continues to prosecute Steven Kurtz, an art professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, on federal charges carrying a possible twenty-year jail sentence. Kurtz came to the attention of authorities when he called the police to his home after discovering his wife dead (she had suffered a fatal heart attack). Growing suspicious because they saw laboratory equipment, the police searched the apartment, turned up some bacteria samples, and called in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Testing established that the bacteria were harmless, and investigators determined that Kurtz used the bacteria and equipment in his art, which aims to explore the intersections between art, technology, and politics. A grand jury concluded that there was no reason to suspect Kurtz of terrorism-related activity, but handed down charges of mail and wire fraud against both Kurtz and the University of Pittsburgh science professor who had ordered the bacteria and mailed them to Kurtz. Prosecutors allege that the transaction between the two professors did not conform to university regulations regarding the ordering and sharing of bacterial samples, and that the two parties used the mails and e-mail to accomplish the transaction.
The AAUP, along with the National Coalition against Censorship and other groups, in June 2004 issued a statement of concern about the "extended and apparently unwarranted investigation of . . . Kurtz and the chilling effect it is likely to have on other artists or scholars whose work explores the border of art and science or employs harmless biological and chemical materials."
In another case of art arousing government suspicions, an art gallery at Columbia College in Chicago was visited in April by two U.S. Secret Service agents, who demanded information about the artists and curator involved in producing a show titled Axis of Evil, the Secret History of Sin. The agents took photographs of art works, including one depicting President George Bush with a gun to his head. According to newspaper reports, they also questioned the gallery director about the meaning of the art, and instructed her to have the show's curator contact them within twenty-four hours, but took no further action.
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