From: tleylan@pegasus.com (Tom Leylan)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Great Bogg's Story
Date: 16 Dec 92 04:37:12 GMT
Distribution: misc.legal,alt.politics.economics
Organization: Pegasus,  Honolulu

I just thought the following news item was great and I applaud the
efforts of Mr. Boggs.  Any typographical errors are mine.


reprinted without permission from
The New York Times ( Sunday, December 6, 1992)

            Is It Counterfeit Money or Art ? (Or Can It Be Both?)

PITTSBURGH, Dec. 5 (AP) -

Courts in Britain and Australia agree with the artist J.S.G. Boggs,
who has been drawing likenesses of paper money for the last eight
years, that his drawings are just that: art.

But here in his own country the Secret Service has long been suspicious
of him.  On Wednesday, the agency seized some more of his work, calling
it counterfeit cash.

Four Secret Service agents and two city police officers stopped Mr.
Boggs as he left his apartment to attend a ceremony where he had
planned to announce a new project: the printing of $1 million in his
own bills.

The agents searched the apartment for about three hours and, Mr.
Boggs said, seized about 100 drawings and paintings of money as well
as actual currency and receipts.  They also searched his office at
Carnegie Mellon University, where he is a fellow in art and ethics.
"They said I was a counterfeiter, " Mr. Boggs said.  "They don't
understand the difference between art and crime."

Same Size as Real Thing

One Secret Service agent, Tom Abraham, said the search was part of a
continuing investigation.  He referred all questions to Daniel Mayer,
head of the agency's Pittsburgh office, who did not return a telephone
call, seeking comment.

Mr. Boggs, 37 years old, uses colored ink and pencils to draw his
bills, which resemble real United States currency.  He uses a color
photocopying machine to reproduce them.

His bills are the same size as real currency and have green printing
on both sides.  But they say "Pittsburgh, Pa." instead of "Washington,
D.C." and carry Mr. Bogg's signature and the line "The Unit of State
of Bohemia."

"I've consciously made my bills different enough that you can't fool
somebody with them," Mr. Boggs said.

Mr. Boggs does not sell his drawings.  Instead, he "spends" them in
a kind of performance that he describes as critical to his work.

In this performance, he explains to merchants that he is an artist
and wants to exchange his art for goods or services.

He insists on receiving a receipt and change - real money - for the
bills he makes.

He sells the change and the receipts to collectors, who use the
receipts to track down those people who have accepted his bills.
The collectors then pay hundreds of dollars for the bills.

Each transaction is complete when all elements of the deal - the
Boggs bill, the change, and the receipt - are framed on a collector's
wall.

Mr. Boggs estimates that he has exchanged his bills for more than
$250,000 in goods and services, including meals and hotel rooms,
airplane tickets, clothes and a motorcycle.

In 1987, Mr. Boggs was tried in England on charges of illegally
reproducing British currency.  When a jury found him not guilty, he
paid his lawyers in drawings.

Two years later he was thrown in jail on counterfeiting charges in
Australia.  Not only was he found not guilty, a court awarded him
$20,000 in damages.

But when Mr. Boggs was in Cheyenne, Wyo, in 1991, a Secret Service
agent seized 15 of his bills from his hotel room.  The United States
Attorney in Cheyenne declined to prosecute, but the Secret Service
kept the bills as contraband.

In Mr. Bogg's latest project, he intends to exchange #1 million of his
bills for goods and services, and he wants other people to keep them in
circulation by talking merchants into accepting them, just as he does.

"I've been spending this money for eight years," Mr. Boggs said.  "I've
learned so much.  I wanted share the experience."

He said that although the Secret service agents here seized some of
the bills from his new project during their search on Wednesday, most
of the $1 million remained hidden.

---end---
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