A haunting evocation of J.M.W. Turner's life and work

Since the late 1990s, Ellen Harvey has been relating to things and places that the rest of us might consider complete, finished, or even in decline. In 1999, Harvey began painting delicate, oval-shaped copies of 19th-century landscape paintings atop graffiti-decorated surfaces throughout New York City for her "New York Beautification Project." That few in the art world ever saw the works didn't matter to Harvey — the point was to experience what it would be like to paint illegally, to see how the neighborhood regulars would respond to her quaint insertions, and to learn what constituted "acceptable" art.