ABOVE: detail from Tim Eitel’s Boygroup (2003), currently on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art as part of its “From Leipzig” show. Not anything to do with this story, but looks like a good show)

The Cleveland Museum of Art recently told the Newhouse News Service that it spiked a show of nearly 100 J.M.W. Turner paintings because it couldn’t afford the terrorism insurance to cover it, and neither could its American partners. Those partners aren’t slouches either: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The institutions decided to axe the whole plan in December.

The Turner show, organized by London’s Tate Gallery, included works totalling more than $1 billion in value. To insure those works against Terrorism (with a capital T), it was going to cost Cleveland $800,000—or 40 per cent of the total budget planned for the show. In New York and Washington, i.e., places that are actually terrorism targets, the costs would have been much higher.

And the culprits for these high insurance costs? The Guv’ment. Always The Guv’ment.

Newhouse News Service: Price of Terrorism Insurance Scraps Touring Art Exhibit