Duty Free Art Hits U.S. Snag

As featured in The Windsor Star, July 17, 1999

By Craig Pearson

A cross-border art exchange called Duty Free, between contemporary galleries in Windsor and Detroit, has ended up partially disproving its whole concept.

While the American art destined for Windsor arrived without incident last week, the Canadian art ran into trouble getting across the border.

The artworks, by 25 Canadian artists, finally received clearance around 4 p.m. Friday.

That's barely enough time to finalize preparations to transport the art from the Canadian organizing gallery, Artcite, to the American counterpart, Detroit Contemporary, for the official Detroit opening tonight.

"It's the most ironically titled exhibition I think we've ever had," says Chris McNamara, Artcite artistic coordinator.

"There are definitely issues about how art is treated at the border.

"Artcite has done a number of exchanges in Detroit over its 16-year history, but this is the first time we've really had trouble."

Since the show contains so many artists, McNamara says Artcite decided to go through official channels as a group this time, instead of having individual artists bring their own work over - as has happened in the past.

But the nature of modern art is that sometimes it's hard to define, and therefore hard to apply rules to.

That tends to generate paperwork.

"It's not always obvious that it's visual art," McNamara says.

"Paintings are easy. They don't raise red flags. But when you start bringing in video cables and video tapes, then they (customs officers) have questions of where they came from and what they're for."

Duty Free continues in downtown Windsor at Artcite, Common Ground, the Eclectic Cafe and the Milk Cafe until Aug. 1.

It continues at the Detroit Contemporary gallery, 5141 Rosa Parks Blvd., until Aug. 8. Call 977-6564 for more information.