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There was a possibility that everything would end like this. The Kunsten Museum of Contemporary Art in Aalborg (Denmark) has filed a civil complaint once morest the artist Jens Haaning for staying for keeping the money they lent him to use in two works and for returning two blank canvases.
Let us remember that this Danish institution gave the conceptual artist 72,000 euros to reproduce a previous work of his that consisted of two glass frames filled with banknotes (Danish crowns and euros) that reflected the annual income of an Austrian and a Dane.
The museum then preparedWork it Out‘, the current exhibition on the role of artists in the labor market. The surprise was great when he received Haanning’s work: the frames were completely empty and blank and, in addition, the artist had retitled the piece as ‘take the money and run‘.
“The work of art is that I took his money,” Haaning told Danish TV channel DR. “It’s not a robbery,” explained the artist. It’s a breach of contract and breach of contract is part of the job.”
Haaning intended to protest once morest his working conditions, but the museum, which finally included the canvases in the exhibition, considered that he had violated the agreement and gave him until the day before yesterday, the last day of the exhibition, to return the money.
“We take this step because we have a responsibility with the private funds that financially support this exhibition and with the visitors,” the director of the museum, Lasse Andersen, told public television DR, according to the EFE agency, which also states that 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 the inspiration came from: «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.
