Museum sues artist for sending blank canvases and keeping the money

A Danish museum today filed a civil lawsuit against artist Jens Haaning for keeping money borrowed from the institution to use for two works and returning two blank canvases in return.

The Kunsten (Art, in Danish) center in Aalborg (northwest) commissioned Haaning last fall to recreate two of his old works in which he used cash to represent the average annual salary in Denmark and Austria.

In order to update salaries to the current level, the museum lent him 532,549 Danish kroner (about 71,500 euros), but what he received in return were the two blank canvases and a message saying that the money was part of a new work named “Take the money and run.”

Haaning intended to protest his working conditions in this way, but the museum, which finally included the canvases in the exhibition, considered that he had violated the agreement and gave him until yesterday, the last day of the exhibition, to return the money.

“We take this step because we have a responsibility to the private funds that financially support this exhibition and to the visitors,” the museum’s director, Lasse Andersen, told DR public television.

Andersen described what happened as an “unfortunate” incident, but ruled out denouncing the facts to the police to prevent the case from continuing to get worse.

“No, it is not a robbery. It is a violation of contract and that violation is part of the work of art,” Haaning defended himself in previous statements to that medium.

The artist maintains that just recreating the works would have cost him 25,000 crowns (more than 3,000 euros) out of his pocket and that’s where he got the idea to send the blank canvases.

“I invite other people with working conditions as miserable as mine to do the same. If they have a shitty job, they don’t give them money and ask them to use theirs to work, take it out of the box and walk away “, he claimed.

Jens Hanning, 57, is a renowned artist who has exhibited in museums and galleries in Istanbul, Vienna, Dakar, Amsterdam, Stockholm, New York and Barcelona, ​​such as the Miró Foundation. (I)