Reverse Art Heists
You might be asking yourself, what’s a reverse art heist and how could there have been more than one. Well my dear friends we’re going to learn about two pretty notable ones that happened recently in Germany and the very different ways they were dealt with.
Munich, Pinakothek der Moderne
In April, 2024 at the Munich museum, the Pinakothek der Moderne, something very curious happened. On a day when the museum was closed to the public, some new artworks appeared on the walls of the gallery.
On this particular day, there was a new exhibit being installed on philanthropy. One of the employees working on installing the new exhibit made a detour from his designated job and walked over to the modern art floor. Because he was carrying his tools he went totally unnoticed, since he was clearly working on the installation of the exhibit no one gave him a second look or thought. He belonged there even though the museum was closed to the public.
Once on the modern art floor he drilled two small holes in the wall and hung his own 45”x25” painting among the work of modern art masters in the collection. It’s unclear how long the painting was hanging or when it was noticed but when it was the museum immediately removed it from the wall and refused to disclose any detail about it, including its subject matter. (Which is why I don’t have a picture to show you).
Following this the museum released no details about this employee or the painting, in order to dissuade any copycats, and they let him go. He was also banned from ever visiting the museum again. The police also also investigating the employee for property damage, remember those two holes he drilled in the wall? Yup, that’s the damage.
So that’s what happened in Munich, what about the other incident?
Bonn, Bundeskunsthalle
An exhibition was being dismantled in October 2023 at the Bundeskunsthalle in the German city of Bonn called Who We Are. Reflecting a Country of Immigration focusing on themes of identity and, you guessed it, immigration. It had been up for a while and while the museum employees were removing the pieces they surprisingly found that they had one additional painting in their hands that wasn’t accounted for anywhere.
It turned out that maybe weeks before (it’s unknown when the artist snuck the painting into the exhibition) an art student living in the city entered the museum with her painting and stuck it to the wall with double-sided tape. And it went unnoticed as out of place until it was time for the exhibit to be removed.
Taking to Twitter after the discovery the museum tweeted “We think this is funny and would like to know the artist. So get in touch! There will be no trouble, word of honour” (Lawson-Tancred and Carrigan, 2024). After a while, and probably much debate, the artist, Danai Emmanouilidis, did come forward and identify herself to the museum. What they did next couldn’t have been more different than the Munich reaction.
The museum helped to market Emmanouilidis’ painting, titled Georgia, and eventually helped her sell it at Van Ham auction house in Cologne for just over $4,000 on November 30. The proceeds from the sale the artist donated to charity ArtAsyl.
Interesting to see these two starkly different reactions to similar events and curious to know who do you think handled it better? Is there a “right” way to go about this? What would you have done?
Works Cited
Lawson-Tancred, Jo and Margaret Carrigan. “A Short History of Artists Sneaking their Work into Museums”. ArtNet News. 2024. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/a-short-history-of-artists-sneaking-their-work-into-museums-2466736
Schuetze, Christopher F. “A Reverse Art Heist? Museum Finds Employee’s Painting on it’s Wall”. The New York Times. 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/world/europe/germany-painting-museum.html