MUSEUM BLAMES FRENCH-AMERICAN TENSIONS FOR EXHIBITION DELAYS

Officials at the Orlando Museum of Art believe that the French government is deliberately delaying a Monet exhibition, scheduled to open in Orlando in 2005, because of the recent tensions between the governments of France and the United States. The process of securing necessary loans from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen has ground to a halt, Mark Schlueb writes in the Orlando Sentinel. “If [the Musée des Beaux-Arts] weren’t a French-owned museum, I don’t think we’d have these delays,” said Marena Grant Morrisey, executive director of the Orlando museum.