Today’s award goes to the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art at Aalborg in Denmark, which apparently has rather too much trust and rather too little common sense when it comes to paying for exhibits.
A Danish museum wants an artist to return around 534,000 kroner ($83,000) he had been given in cash to recreate old artworks using banknotes, after he produced blank canvasses with the title “Take the Money and Run”.
Jens Haaning, a Danish artist, was commissioned by the Kunsten Museum.
He was asked to reproduce two of his works representing the annual salary in Denmark and Austria.
But the artist pocketed the cash and produced the blank canvasses.
. . .
Mr Haaning, 56, has vowed to keep the cash.
“The work is that I have taken their money,” he told dr.dk.
“I encourage other people who have just as miserable working conditions as me to do the same,” he said, adding that recreating his past works would have put him 25,000 kroner out of pocket.
There’s more at the link.
Quite apart from the artist’s (lack of) ethics and morals, I have to admit, titling the blank canvases “Take the Money and Run” was side-splitting! One hopes that next time, the museum won’t pay out the money unless and until it’s received the artwork and found it satisfactory.
Peter
Brilliant!
Ouch, lesson learned. And I wonder if that 'artist' will ever get another commission…
It's more expensive than this guy's art — https://notthebee.com/article/italian-artist-sells-invisible-sculpture-for-18000-and-ive-got-an-invisible-bridge-to-sell-you — but still a great deal cheaper than Hunter Biden's "paintings" (asking price $500,000).
Come on, now, lack of ethics and morals?
As they say "Art is whatever you can get people to buy".
They only want their money back because the art made the art world's pretensions too obvious.