A Bit More Detail

The story of art student Thórarinn Ingi Jónsson's placing a fake bomb in the Royal Ontario Museum last November on the night of an AIDS fundraiser, causing panic and an evacuation of the building, is over.

Art student Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson has been given a conditional discharge and placed on probation for planting an object resembling a bomb outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Jonsson, an Icelandic citizen who was attending the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), placed the object on Nov. 28, 2007 outside the building in downtown Toronto.This is a bird's-eye view of the Royal Ontario Museum in downtown Toronto. The museum had to be evacuated Nov. 28, 2007 after officials discovered a fake bomb outside the building.

Jonsson said he wanted people to think about where art is placed and how that changes their view of it. He described it as a conceptual art piece, using plastic, wood and glass and a video.

Instead, it triggered the evacuation of the building and caused the cancellation of a major fundraiser for the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research scheduled for that evening.

In his decision yesterday, Judge William Bassel declared it "a really stupid act, even for a young person," according to the Globe and Mail newspaper.

One poster in the toronto community claimed that this punishment represented a diminished tolerance for artistic creativity. A commenter