“Take the money and run”: in Denmark, the artist must return the money to the museum because he exhibited empty canvases
The Danish artist Jens Haaning had to place 532,000 Danish crowns (over 2.8 million hryvnias) on canvases, which the museum gave him. Instead, the man took the money and sent blank works for the exhibition, The Guardian reports. The court in Copenhagen obliged the artist to return the funds to the Museum of Contemporary Art Kunsten. Jens Haaning is a conceptual artist whose work focuses on pay inequality and power. Exhibition of blank canvases by Jens Haaning. Photo: HENNING BAGGER/Ritzau Scanpix/Getty Images He already had two similar works. In 2007, he placed kroner on the canvas “Average annual income of Denmark”. In 2011, Haaning dedicated his piece to the income of Austrians, using dollars. In 2021, the artist received an order from the Kunsten museum to repeat his past works. 532,000 Danish crowns (over 2.8 million hryvnias) were allocated to him for canvases. Haaning also received a fee of 40,000 (over 211,000 hryvnias). The artist sent the museum two blank canvases with the inscription “Take the money and run.” The works were exhibited, but he was asked to return the money. Haaning refused, and the museum sued him. “We are not a rich museum. We have to think carefully about how we spend our funds, and we don’t spend more than we can afford,” commented the director of the museum, Lasse Anderson. However, the artist denied his guilt. “The job is that I took their money. It’s not theft. It’s a breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the job. I encourage other people who have the same deplorable working conditions as me to do the same. If they are sitting in some lousy job and are not getting paid, and they are also being asked to pay money to go to work, so grab everything you can and run from there,” he said. We will remind you that we previously wrote that the archives of the Biruchiy art residence that survived in Buchi are being shown in New York. Read also: “I was very hungry while I was sitting in the basement. Now I want to become a chef”: diaries of Ukrainian children, which will be shown in Amsterdam
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