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Artist smuggles his work into top museums
Sunday, March 27, 2005






NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Many a visitor to New York's Museum of Modern Art has probably thought, "I could do that."

A British graffiti artist who goes by the name "Banksy" went one step further, by smuggling in his own picture of a soup can and hanging it on a wall, where it stayed for more than three days earlier this month before anybody noticed.

The prank was part of a coordinated plan to infiltrate four of New York's top museums on a single day.

The largest piece, which he smuggled into the Brooklyn Museum, was a two foot by 1.5 foot (61cm by 46 cm) oil painting of a colonial-era admiral, to which the artist had added a can of spray paint in his hand and anti-war graffiti in the background.

The other two targets were the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, where he hung a glass-encased beetle with fighter jet wings and missiles attached to its body -- another comment on war, Banksy told Reuters on Thursday.

"It was just an outsider's view of the modern American bug, bristling with listening devices and military hardware," he said.

An art Web site called www.woostercollective.com has posted pictures of the artist -- wearing an Inspector Clouseau-style overcoat, a hat and a fake beard and nose -- hanging up his work at the four museums and describing how he did it.

Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location in Britain, Banksy said he conducted all four operations on March 13, helped by accomplices who filmed him and provided distractions where necessary.

"They staged a gay tiff (lovers' quarrel), shouting very loudly and obnoxiously," said the artist, declining to give his real name or any personal details beyond his occupation as a professional painter and decorator.

It is not the first time he has staged such stunts. Last year he smuggled work into the Louvre in Paris and London's Tate, attracting attention in the British media.

"My sister inspired me to do it. She was throwing away loads of my pictures one day and I asked her why. She said 'It's not like they're going to be hanging in the Louvre.'"

He took that as a challenge. "I thought why wait until I'm dead," he said.

Robotic alarm clock designed by graduate student at MIT rolls away and hides By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN







CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - Before you hit the snooze button a second time on this alarm clock, you'll have to hunt it down.

The shag carpet-covered robotic alarm clock on wheels, called Clocky, rolls away and hides.

The clock is the invention of Gauri Nanda, a graduate student - and occasional oversleeper - who works in the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"I've been known to hit the snooze bar for a couple hours, wake up two hours later and be completely shocked," said Nanda, 25, who created Clocky for an industrial design course last year.

She made a prototype out of foam, a pair of wheels and a circuit board connected to small motors. "It is programmed to tell the motors to move randomly, to generate random speeds and directions so that the clock ends up in a new place every day," she said.

Nanda's adviser, Michael Bove, said hundreds of people interested in buying or selling the clocks have called and e-mailed. But the gadget is not yet available for sale.

Nanda is thinking of starting her own business to manufacture and market the clock.

MIT owns the intellectual property rights to Clocky and other student inventions, but Bove said Nanda would receive a share of any revenue generated.

Nanda said she wanted Clocky to remind its owners of a troublesome pet.

"The idea really was to use technology in a more playful way," she said. "It's sort of like a hide-seek game."