Like most art-museums, we have money problems. We're dependent on donations from private individuals and foundations, and frankly, there's times that they don't come in as often as we'd like. Our collection isn't exactly top-drawer to start off with, but it's not for lack of throwing money at it. Generally we walk down to the Post Office in the morning to see if there's any checks in the mail, and then cash them at the BratwurstHaus if there are any. The rest of the morning we either patronize the Arts a bit, or satisfy the Fire Department with yet another inspection of Exit A12, then we break for lunch. If there's any money in the drawer, after lunch we generally go out looking for new exhibits or replacements for the older ones - they tend to fade after a few months.

Our biggest problem is that we keep getting more and more stuff, but the wall-space doesn't get any larger. So a few weeks ago, we tried to kill two birds with one stone: clear a bit of wall-space andraise a little extra cash by selling off some pictures we'd gotten tired of. We'd had some of them for over a year, and we just felt like it was time for a change.

So one afternoon a few weeks ago, we took part of our collection down off the walls, rolled them all up into a cardboard tube, and took them down to the Sheboygan "House o' Auctions". (Picture at right)

It is further than it looks to the auction house, let us tell you. We will freely admit that we were dragging somewhat by the time we got there, and our mood was not improved any by our assistant's having given us misleading directions. Our assistant is walking a tightrope as far as job-security is concerned, we will say that much, and hopefully that's allthat need be said, are you listening Ms. Steinem?

And our mood certainlywasn't improved by the time we finally got to see the chief auctioneer, or whatever he calls himself. A half-hour wait in his ante-room, and we could swear he was playing darts in his office. We can't think of any other reason for the three thuds and a shout of "One hundred and eighty" that came from in there every few minutes.

But it was when we spread the pictures out and he started laughing at them that we started to get really steamed at him, the stuck-up, fat little Art-Nazi. "You do realize that very few of the old masters used crayon as their primary medium?", he whines in tha la-di-dah faggy tenor voice he's got. "Fewer still used the insides of Corn-Flake packets as their drawing surface". What a damn' snob - as if the old masters didn't improvise from time to time. "Lissen, chief",we reasoned with him. "Ain't you never heard of a starving artist? Them boys will draw on anything once they're consumed by the white hot fires of wossname - Inspiration". We will freely admit to getting more than a little irritated by this annoyingly pink-faced, chubby, bald-headed little nose-bleed.

But, cutting a long story short, the best offer we could pry out of him was an offer not to sneer at them any more, so we bought them back to the museum again. We were in no mood to be trifled with by the time we got back to the museum, and it was probably as well that our assistant had taken the afternoon off. We sadly unpacked the pictures, and wondered what the best place for them would be. There were big clean spots on the walls where the paintings used to be, and we figured it would be easier to rehang them than to wash the walls, so here you are. The grand re-opening of the Sheboygan Art Museum's Portrait Gallery. Whoopee.

(We quote the self-styled "Art Expert" alongside the pictures, so you can judge for yourselves)

"The original is much more than an inch square. And it is extremely well painted. This, however, would disgrace a high-school yearbook."

(We told you he was a snob)

"Franz Hals' original shows a man who appears to be mildly inebriated. This appears to show a chappie that is 'stoned', as the youngsters say"

(We had thought we were probably on safer ground here. We even looked this one up in a book - that funny looking thing at the bottom is supposed to be there. Apparently, if you look at it from the right angle, it's a skull, or a man on horseback or something. We had never bothered, to be honest.)

But then Mr. "I know more about paintings than you do" had to go whipping out his magnifying glass didn't he?

"Holbein was portraying Ambassadors to the English Court. This is quite clearly an English person wearing a false beard. Or maybe someone else's beard. And why would he be whistling?..."

"...And this fellow simply wouldn't even pass muster as the Ambassador to Canada."

"If there were still penal colonies, whoever did this deserves to be forcibly transported there."

"The composition's all wrong. I'm sure there would have been arms and legs in the original. When you can't see her legs, she could be standing upright in a wheelbarrow for all we know. Pretending she's the queen or something."

"That is not Van Gogh. It looks to me like this chap would probably have trouble spelling Van Gogh."

"Use some common sense man! Why on earth would anyone paint a portrait when the subject had smoke in his eyes?"

"Well, finally we see a true work of art. But I'm puzzled... I see Mario in the back, but who on earth are the other two?"