A man was fined $1,227 for knocking off the head of a wax Hitler figure in Germany the other day. Although art glorifying Hitler has been banned, the old taboos are starting to wear off. The artist (Madame Tussauds) justified her work by saying museum avoided politics, arguing Hitler stood for a significant part of German history and his waxwork therefore had a legitimate part in the exhibition. Join discussion...

Recently, in Venezuela, galleries have been displaying an exhibition called Bodies Revealed. For this exhibition, human corpses are dried, dissected to show the systems of the bodies, and displayed as art. The exhibition consists of fourteen complete human corpses and 200 human organs. Its purpose is "to tell the story of the miraculous systems at work within each of us every second of our existence." The displaying of dead human bodies as art has recently become very controversial. Some argue that it is immoral, while others argue that it is artistic and natural. Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, announced his disapproval of the exhibition on a television show, saying that it was "moral decomposition". Chavez closed the Bodies Revealed exhibition in the galleries in Caracas, Venezuela. Join discussion...

To mark the start of the six-month presidency of the European Union an installation piece was commissioned by the Czech Republic to be located in Brussels at the European Council. In the piece titled "Entropa" by David Cerny, each country is represented. Cerny claimed that each piece was done by one of 27 artists, this was false. He had constructed the whole piece. Also, the stereotypes dipicted in the installation have angered many of the member countries. The outline of France is dipicted with a banner and the word "strike", Italy a soccer field, Bulgaria with interlocking hole-in-the-floor toilets, Romania as a Dracula-themed amusment park, Netherlands as flooded, and Germany as a series of highways that could resemble a swastika. Join discussion...

A Muslim woman visiting a gallery with her family in Venice, Italy was pulled aside by a guard because of her veil. She was questioned by the manager of the gallery and released to continue browsing, but chose to leave the building. There is in fact a law in Italy making it illegal to cover one's face in public. This law, instated in 1975, was designed to counter the threat of terrorism. The manager of the gallery supports the action of his employee, saying it was what he expected anyone to do as a matter of security. The Venice City Council disagrees, however, stating that under certain conditions the law does not apply and people should be able to tell the difference. Join discussion...

"Art and wealth are rarely strangers—one person’s history of art is another’s sociology of conspicuous consumption," states Adrian Ellis of London's The Art Newspaper. Recent changes in wealth distribution toy with the art world in a myriad of ways. The art market, now vibrant, and the museum building boom introduce a vital issue to the artistic community: the relationship between active private collectors and public museums. Lately, on a global scale, "new museums and galleries that are conceived, funded and run privately" have sprung up, creating a phenomenon similar to that which occured in the U.S. Guilded Age. The collections are permanent, and act as significant additions to "the cultural fabric of the city", encompassing a "range of curatorial, conservational, public and scholarly programmes." Founders of such institutions do not believe that donation to public institutions affords any degree of control - their draw backs include limited opportunities for display, and even lack of conservational standards. However, these new institutions are "often erratic in their governance," and the art represents acquisitive interests of a single person, a "passionate and single minded interest" - the complete opposite of public museum's universalist impulses. As economic inequalities widen, the class of art collectors is growing; there will be not halt to privately funded museums in the future. Join discussion...

In 1966, a Harvard student visiting Northeastern Thailand to research his thesis tripped over a tree root and hit his head. But then he made one of the biggest accidental archaeological finds in history. What he found was thousands of pieces of evidence - pots and jewelry, ceramic, stoneware, bronze - of the Ban Chiang culture that is thought to be the earliest prehistoric settlement in Southeast Asia. The excavation of the tens of thousands of antiquities started in the 1970s. Over the years, many, if not most, of these pieces have ended up in the hands of private collectors as well as many American museums. After conducting a five-year secret investigation by three federal agencies of these pieces and how they came to be in these museums' hands, Thailand wants them back. Badly. Their argument is that the antiquities located in the U.S. are stolen material. The legal matter is nowhere near being "cut and dry", but there is a chance that both U.S. and Thai law agrees on the matter. In addition, museum curators and other experts have said that this might be more of an ethical matter than a legal one. But as for the legal side, Stephen K. Urice, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law believes the case could swing in any direction, saying that “the whole thing could be dropped altogether because of insufficient evidence or because they are feeling weak about their legal theories, or this could move forward into an important, precedent-setting case.” Join discussion...

The Museum of Danish Cartoon Art in Copenhagen has decided to purchase the 12 characitures of Muhammed that sparked riots around the globe when published by European newspapers. “We hope we can secure all of the works to preserve them for the future. The caricatures have become a part of Danish history,” says Royal Library spokesperson Jytte Kjaergaard. Depicting the prophet's head upon a dog's body, or illustrating him holding a bomb in his turban, the works are certainly offensive; the issue, however, provokes one to ask "what is freedom of expression, and to what extent may this concept be taken?" Men involved were convicted of inciting race hate and jailed for years, but are they rightly condemned? They only hoped to excercise their rights. On the other hand, more than fifty people were killed in the riots which the cartoons' publication caused. The Danish Media Museum, connected with the cartoon museum, hopes to create an exhibit with these questions in mind. "We would like to show them together with media reports about the publication and the protests against it,” Ervin Nielsen, director of the Media Museum, says. They hope to present all the facts not to provoke, but to inform. Join discussion...

The new Grohmann Museum recently opened on the campus of the Milwaulke School of Engineering, displaying some works commissioned by and produced under Germany's Third Reich. These pieces are displayed without any mention of their historical ties, raising some questions of the museum's intent. They maintain that the purpose of the collection is to educate students about art and the German industry depicted in the pieces. Join discussion...

The University of Iowa recently considered selling its most famous piece of art, Jackson Pollock's Mural. The abstract painting comprises the majority of the monetary value of the school's entire collection, and officials said that the money obtained could be used to diversify the collection. The money (an estimated $20-$140 million) could also have been used to purchase other items for the school. Eventually the auction was decided against, as the painting is seen as part of the school, and is now part of the permanent collection. Join discussion...