Terror Setback - The captures

Terror Setback - The captures over the last few months of Ramsi Bin AlShibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were all important.

But no victory against terrorism is quite as key as this; art shows can go on.

Yes, I'm being sarcastic.

While museums are pretty scarce on lists of potential terror targets, the price of insuring museums and the works of art they house (whose values have been immensely inflated over the past decade) has skyrocketed.

My congressional "representative", Betty McCollum of St. Paul's Fourth Congressional District, is on the job:

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. museums have struggled to obtain works for major exhibitions from overseas due to skyrocketing insurance rates and jittery art lenders who fear losing their pieces in a terrorist strike.

As more museums are unable to afford to insure exhibitions on their own, they are increasingly turning to the federal government.

Supporters of the arts, including Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., say the federal indemnity program that insures artworks is overwhelmed and needs to be expanded.

She has introduced legislation that would raise the amount of indemnity coverage that can be provided at any particular time from $5 billion to $8 billion. It also increases how much coverage the program -- run through the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) -- can provide to one exhibition, from $500 million to $750 million.

"It's incumbent upon the federal government -- this is a role that they've undertaken since 1975 -- to help make art available to citizens throughout the United States," McCollum said.

So in other words, McCollum has spent her last two years opposing most effective military and intelligence responses to terrorism, she will go all-out to support subsidizing the payment of inflated premiums to cover museums in the event an attack happens anyway?

Posted by Mitch at March 6, 2003 07:16 AM