Artist Takes Museum’s Money And Flees With It, And That’s The Art
Photo 143298760 © Elnur | Dreamstime.com
From invisible sculptures worth thousands of dollars to US$69 million JPGs, this year has seen its fair share of odd art achievements. Yet, one museum was caught unawares after a commissioned project left it US$84,000 poorer and with nothing in return.
An example of a small investment with a high profit, Danish artist Jens Haaning was given 534,000 kroner (US$84,000) in cash by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark to create two artworks. He made off with the money and left both canvases blank, before titling his work, Take the Money and Run.
Artist Jens Haaning received $84,000 to incorporate into a piece. When the museum took delivery, they found two empty frames with a new title: "Take the Money And Run" https://t.co/ut1bUe0ViH
— Bloomberg (@business) September 27, 2021
The deal, according to their written agreement, was to recreate Haaning’s artworks from 2007 and 2010 portraying the average annual incomes of an Austrian and a Dane. They would feature banknotes, lent by the museum to be incorporated into the art.
However, when the box containing Haaning’s finished work arrived, the museum found two empty frames and no banknotes.
“The work is that I have taken their money,” Haaning told Danish radio show P1 Morgen. The artist disclaimed that this act wasn’t theft but a “breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work.”
The artworks that the museum had in mind, according to a blurb on its website, were for mixed-media pieces entitled An Average Danish Annual Income, 2010–2021 and An Average Austrian Year Income, 2017 - 2021. “Side by side, the bills are carefully mounted and shown as a classic work framed in glass. Cool cash and a cool aesthetic,” it noted.
If, by “cool aesthetic,” it meant minimalism, then the vision had indeed materialized. No sign of “cool cash,” though.
Haaning explained that he was compelled to take the art in a whole new direction after feeling shortchanged by how much the museum would be paying him for the work, expressing that it was a slap in the face considering the context of the project.
To produce the two pieces, Haaning would apparently need to fork out 25,000 kroner (US$3,900) on his own.
According to Artnet News, the museum is going with the retaliation for now, since the project is meant for an ongoing exhibition about how artists fit into the saturated labor market. “I absolutely want to give Jens the right [to say] that a new work has been created in its own right, which actually comments on the exhibition we have,” detailed the establishment’s director Lasse Andersson. “But that is not the agreement we had.”
After this, though, the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art is expecting to get its loaned cash back, and it’s even contemplating on getting the police involved.
The artist, on the other hand, is bent on keeping the money.
[via Artnet News and Bloomberg, cover photo 143298760 © Elnur | Dreamstime.com]
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