Now showing at Los Angeles' Geffen Contemporary museum: "the first major U.S. museum survey of graffiti and street art," an exhibition that reverently displays "installations by 50 of the most dynamic artists from the graffiti and street art community."

Translation: They're having wine and cheese parties surrounded by framed images of urban blight. They're giving the destruction of other people's property a hallowed place in high-art halls.

And they're inviting school groups to tour this retrospective, even - no kidding - selling cans of spray paint (along with books like "Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art," $39.99) in the gift shop.

If all that weren't bad enough, this grand celebration of vandalism is slated to come to a museum near you - the Brooklyn Museum - in March.

Which means museum mavens will be sticking their thumbs in the eyes of every bodega owner and restaurant manager who struggles to keep his or her property graffiti-free, not to mention the eyes of all New Yorkers who cringe recalling the days of graffiti-covered subway cars.

They will be doing this with taxpayers' help. While the city spends some $2.4 million a year to battle vandalism, and the transit authority spends plenty more, taxpayers also subsidize the Brooklyn Museum to the tune of about $9 million a year.

Usually a fine investment. Not this time.