Links via Kirstie:

+ There is a huge growth industry of Chinese artists hand painting copies of Western Art. Not one by one, but multiple copies systemaically churned out and shipped around the world.

+ More on the artist Steven Kurtz

On the afternoon of May 11 last year, Steven Kurtz, a
respected artist and professor at the State University of New York at
Buffalo, called 911 to report that his wife, Hope, 45, was not breathing.

The police arrived to find Hope Kurtz dead, and in a hallway they found
something else - a biological lab, with an incubator, centrifuge and
bacterial cultures growing in petri dishes. Windows nearby were covered with
foil, and on the shelves sat books like “The Biology of Doom” and “Spores,
Plagues and History: The Story of Anthrax.” The F.B.I. was called in. Agents
in white biohazard suits scoured the house. Subpoenas - citing sections of
the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act - were issued to Mr. Kurtz and
other members of an art group he and his wife helped found, the Critical Art
Ensemble. And in the summer of 2004 Mr. Kurtz was indicted by a federal
grand jury on charges of mail and wire fraud, accused of illegally obtaining
two of the bacteria samples in his lab, crimes that could send him to prison
for up to 20 years.