A Danish Museum Lent an Artist $84,000 to Reproduce an Old Work About Labor. Instead, He Pocketed It and Called It Conceptual Art

The museum said it will eventually want its money back, but the artist, Jens Haaning, has no plans to acquiesce.

A Danish Museum Lent an Artist $84,000 to Reproduce an Old Work About Labor. Instead, He Pocketed It and Called It Conceptual Art

A Danish artist was given tens of thousands of dollars by a museum to reproduce an old sculpture. Instead, he pocketed the money and called it a new conceptual artwork.

Take the Money and Run is the name of the piece by artist Jens Haaning—as well as a rather straightforward description of it.

For its current exhibition, the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in ​​Aalborg, Denmark, lent Haaning 534,000 kroner ($84,000). Per their written agreement, the artist would exhibit the banknotes themselves, effectively recreating a pair of artworks he made in 2007 and 2010 that represented the average annual incomes of an Austrian and a Dane, respectively.

However, when the museum opened up the box containing Haaning’s piece, they found two empty frames. The banknotes were absent.

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