Stables for TRIARC / Kurtz cleared (Wednesday 11 June 2008)
Nags out, TRIARC in
Tomorrow sees the official opening of the new home of TRIARC, the Trinity Iriah Art Research Centre; the new locale is the renovated Provost's House Stables.
To mark the occasion, there is the
Lewis Glucksman Memorial Symposium, in the Edmund Burke Theatre at 4pm. Artists
Dorothy Cross and Hughie O’Donoghue, along with Prof Stephen Bann of the University of Bristol, will address the topic of "the significance of the artist's statement."
The main bash is at 6pm in the Stables.
Kurtz exonerated
compiled by Madeline Meehan
 |
Free Range Grain, installation view, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, with Steve Kurtz in foreground; courtesy media.tactics |
The artist Dr Steven Kurtz has been cleared of all charges.
As you may or may not recall, Kurtz awoke one morning to find his wife had passed away during the night. There followed a law-enforcement fiasco that saw Kurtz facing up to 20 years in prison, all based around harmless bacteria. You can read more about the case here, in an article for Circa by Gregory Sholette.
Prosecutors originally wanted to go after Kurtz for bioterrorism. In May 2004 he was charged with the lesser crime of mail and wire
fraud for the transfer of two bacteria cultures from Dr Robert
Ferrell for use in an art project for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary
Art.
The charges were filed despite the fact that the supposed victims, American
Type Culture Collection and the University of Pittsburgh, never mentioned any
wrongdoing. The maximum sentence for the charges filed was 20 years in prison.
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Janet Galore / Deborah F. Lawrence: poster for CAE defense-fund benefit; courtesy the artists |
When asked for a statement at the end of the four-year debacle, all Kurtz had to
say was “I don't have a statement, but I do have questions. As an innocent man,
where do I go to get back the four years the Department of Justice stole from
me? As a taxpayer, where do I go to get back the millions of dollars the FBI
and Justice Department wasted persecuting me? And as a citizen, what must I do
to have a Justice Department free of partisan corruption so profound it has
turned on those it
is sworn to protect?”
For more information, visit caedefensefund.org
Most recent news items:
• The return of the portrait competition (Tuesday 10 June 2008)
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• Browne / Kennedy selected for Venice (Tuesday 3 June 2008)
• Circa: the stand (Friday 30 May 2008)
For a full list of news items, click here.
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