Poster Boy, the street art provocateur known for remixing New York City's subway advertising (and once doing the same for the Museum of Modern Art, against its will), has been busy planning a show of his work at Trinity College's Austin Arts Center in Hartford, Connecticut. At least, he was busy, until the college decided that Poster Boy's art was illegal, and promptly canceled the show.

The school takes issue with "the fact that the materials are appropriated from the streets," the artist told the Hartford Courant. As the college sees it, the artworks are made from stolen property, and therefore might be illegal themselves. The anonymous collage artist, who freely admits to stealing his materials from public advertisements, is none too pleased with the cancellation. "They are censoring the Poster Boy show because of the political or legal aspect... of the work," he said.

Trinity College spokeswoman Michele Jacklin said the decision to cancel the show, titled "Street Alchemy," was made by the college's vice president for finance and operations. "It came to the attention of certain people at Trinity late last week that there were legal issues associated with Poster Boy and his artwork," she said. "Chief among them was that illegally obtained materials may have been used in creating his artwork." Why the museum did not discover the show's possible legal implications until it was already installed remains unclear.

Poster Boy's show had centered on two altered billboards — one for State Farm Insurance and the other for the National Guard. Trinity College had planned only to postpone the exhibition, but given the delay and likelihood of cancellation, the artist insisted on canceling it outright.  Poster Boy calls the decision censorship, but Jacklin argues otherwise — "This was strictly focused on the legal issues," she said.

Poster Boy is no stranger to legal issues. The artist isn't just a single figure — Poster Boy is a collective of street artists working around the tri-state area, several of whom have been arrested. In 2009, Henry Matyjewicz, a 27-year-old living in Bushwick, Brooklyn, was taken by officers at an art event in SoHo and charged with two misdemeanor counts of criminal mischief. Matyjewicz is widely accepted as the driving force behind Poster Boy, and is said to have appeared at Trinity College as well. At least now, there's no exhibition opening at which Matyjewicz could be arrested. The same cannot be said for fellow street artist Shepard Fairey.