Insurance costs sideline art show

A traveling show of paintings by J.M.W. Turner, the renowned British landscape artist, has been postponed indefinitely because of the high cost of terrorism insurance.

The exhibition of artworks, whose value is estimated at more than $1 billion, was organized by the Tate Gallery in London, which is home to the largest collection of Turner paintings.

Beginning next year, the show was scheduled to travel to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as well as to the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

But the high cost of insuring the artworks prompted the museums to cancel the show.

Charles Venable, the Cleveland museum’s deputy director for collections and programs, said that insurance rates for high-value art exhibitions had skyrocketed since the Sept. 11 attacks.