This Danish Artist Was Ordered To Repay The Museum For Submitting Blank Canvas
A Danish artist Jens Haaning has been ordered by the court to repay the museum after submitting two empty canvases.
A Danish artist has been ordered by the court to repay the museum after submitting two blank canvases.
In September 2021, Danish artist Jens Haaning – whose work focuses on power and inequality – was commissioned by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in northern Denmark, to recreate his earlier works that present average income.
He previously pasted actual banknotes on two canvases in different sizes to illustrate the gap in average annual income in Denmark and Austria.
The museum provided Haaning with about 534,000 kroner (US$84,000) to recreate the earlier artworks, as well as a 40,000 kroner (US$3,000) artist’s fee.
In return, Haaning sent two empty canvas titled “Take the Money and Run”.
“The work is that I have taken their money,” the artist explained to DR, a Danish public broadcasting company, according to the Guardian. “It’s not theft. It is breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work”.
“I encourage other people who have working conditions as miserable as mine to do the same. If they’re sitting in some shitty job and not getting paid, and are actually being asked to pay money to go to work, then grab what you can and beat it,” he said, adding that he would have lost money if he had recreated the works.
“We are not a wealthy museum. We have to think carefully about how we spend our funds, and we don’t spend more than we can afford,” the director of the Kunsten Museum told the Guardian in 2021.
The museum still put the blank canvas on display as part of an exhibition called, “Work It Out”, as the director viewed Haaning’s act as a “humoristic approach”.
On Monday Sep. 18, after the museum took legal action, Haaning was ordered to return 534,000 kroner on Jan. 16, when the exhibition ends.
