By Tim Binnall
Commissioned to create pieces using $70,000 in cash, a clever artist in Denmark provided a pair of empty picture frames instead and ultimately wound up in court over the odd 'heist.' The very weird case reportedly began back 2021 when the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in the city of Aalborg enlisted Jens Haaning to reproduce two of his previous celebrated works which featured Euros and krone notes as a way of making a statement about inequality. In order to facilitate the effort, the museum gave the artist approximately $50,000 so that he could procure the banknotes needed for the pieces. However, when he finally delivered on the commissioned work, they were aghast to discover that Haaning had pocketed the money as something of a performance piece.
Just prior to the planned unveiling of the reproductions, the museum received a pair of empty picture frames, which he had audaciously dubbed 'Take the Money and Run.' As one might imagine, the institute was deeply dismayed by this turn of events and demanded that Haaning return the funds which they had given him to create the reproductions. For this part, the artist was insistent that the whole affair was part of an elaborate conceptual 'piece,' explaining at the time that "the work is that I have taken their money. 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," he went on to declare, "grab what you can and beat it." The populist nature of Haaning's message did not resonate with the museum, which lamented that they did not have the financial stability to be a willing participant in the 'performance piece' and, as such, they wound up taking him to court over the pilfered funds. This week, a court in Denmark sided with them and ordered the artist to repay the $70,000 he had been given to craft the work. Amazingly, despite all of the trouble that the curious concept had caused, Haaning was allowed to keep the fee he had originally been paid to create the reproductions.