Punishment to fit the crime

Likely in response to the 15-year-old graffiti artist who was stabbed to death by a neighborhood resident last weekend in Manurewa, New Zealand, the government announced the start of a program designed to crackdown on graffiti. The program called Stop (Stop Tagging Our Place) will include legislation to fund anti-graffiti programs, limit sales of spray paint and increase law enforcement efforts.  

One part of the crackdown is an increased use of ‘restorative justice.’ Apparently taggers who are caught would be forced to clean up some of their own work.

“I think some of the most effective punishment is when taggers have to clean up their tags in the full glare of the public,” said Auckland’s Police Minister Annette King.

I’m not sure if it will work, but it is an interesting idea. Maybe taggers would be less inclined to paint on illegal walls if they themselves would have to paint over what I can only assume they consider to be great art work.  

As Seen In Puerto Rico

Graffiti found in San Juan, Puerto Rico

Photo by Kayla Webley

Museums Turn Blind Eye To Stolen Art

A New York Times article suggests that museum curators are so greedy to build their collections that they will accept artifacts even though they might be tainted. One deputy director of collections admitted to an undercover investigator that she was supposed to feign resistance, but eventually accept antiquities, even without proper paperwork.

“Museums are in a sense just turning a blind eye to what everybody knows in their heart of hearts is going on,” said the specialist, Patty Gerstenblith, a professor of law at DePaul University.

“By not thinking about what they buy, they are putting money into an international network of smugglers, looters, thieves and destroyers. As educational institutions, museums have a responsibility to look beyond that particular object” that they may be acquiring.

I could not agree more.

Chicagoan Tapped in Stolen Art Investigation

The same day as four Southern California museums were raided, authorities searched the private museum of Barry MacLean, a trustee of the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago. A Los Angeles Times article said:

The affidavit suggests that MacLean built his well-known art collection with substantial help from Robert Olson, an alleged smuggler of illicitly excavated American Indian, Thai and other Asian artifacts.  

In a phone interview Monday, Olson confirmed that MacLean was his biggest client, saying the Chicagoan purchased as much as $50,000 to $100,000 in Asian antiquities a year during the eight to 10 years they did business.

Graffiti Artist Allegedly Murdered

A 15-year-old boy in New Zealand was stabbed to death while reportedly painting graffiti on a fence in a suburban neighborhood near Auckland. A 50-year-old businessman, who lives near the fence, appeared in court for the murder.

In response to the murder of the tagger the mayor of the town said, “Graffiti is an issue we absolutely want to get on top of.”

 Yeah. So is murder.

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 A New Zealand newspaper article: Does graffiti cause murder?

Glow-in-the-Dark Graffiti?

This gadget blogger obviously doesn’t approve of street artists using glow-in-the-dark for graffiti, but I think it would be rad to see (on a commissioned wall, of course).  Apparently when the paint dries in day light it looks like a fine off-white powder maybe this would be a less-offensive form of graffiti?

As Seen In Chicago Alleys

Little Village, Chicago

Meeting of Styles 2007

California Museums Raided

Four Southern California museums were raided late last week in the continuing effort to crack down on stolen artifacts being offered as donations to museums. According to an Associated Press story, federal agents raided the museums mostly in search of artifacts allegedly taken from Thailand’s Ban Chiang, one of the most prehistoric settlements ever discovered in Southeast Asia. The artifacts were likely smuggled into the U.S. and donated at inflated prices to collectors could claim fraudulent tax deductions.

The story also says that some museum officials initially questioned how the artifacts were obtained, but eventually accepted them.

In the past year some of the largest institutions in the nation (The Metropolitan Museum in New York, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the J. Paul Getty Museum in California) have been found to have knowingly accept looted artifacts. If the crackdown on stolen art and artifacts is to ever be successful — and if museums hope to improve their tarnished reputations – they need to better investigate where the art comes from and how it got to the U.S.

Making Graffiti Interactive?

As this blogger points out, the problem with graffiti art being anonymous, is that when you stumble upon a really great piece there is no information card attached to the artwork to tell you who made it, when it was painted and what they were referencing with the work.

New technology being tested in Hamburg, Germany, by the new media agency Jung von Matt, would give the viewers information they are looking for. The technology would allow artists to affix interactive stickers to their work that, when photographed with a mobile phone camera, explain the details of the graffiti.

Hamburg’s first interactive wall, called Nextwall, allows viewers to watch videos of the artists painting the wall,  download wallpapers for their phone and virtually ‘tag’ the wall with an “I was here” feature. Another blogger notes the technology can also be expanded to include a comprehensive guide to the graffiti via Bluetooth and allow users to download coupons to area stores.

I wonder if making graffiti more informational would cause more people to foster an appreciation for the art. Graffiti is often just understood and appreciated by the artists themselves and their close circle of followers — could this new technology bring graffiti to the masses?

Judge Acknowledges Graffiti Is Art

An alleged graffiti artist was tried in an Ontario, Calif., court for spray painting at a local skate park. Nothing new, right? Except that in this newspaper’s report, the judge himself acknowledged that the blue-colored abstract looked “more like a painting than mere graffiti.”

The man was still sentenced to 100 hours of community service for the painting, because — art or not — it was a problem for the city, the judge said. A problem that cost the city $1,300 to remove.