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Artist is paid for blank canvases after being given £60,000 to create work

Fun VLOG September 29, 2021
A woman stands in front of an empty frame hung up at the Kunsten Museum in Aalborg, Denmark, on September 28 2021. - The Danish museum loaned an artist $84,000 in cash to recreate old artworks of his using the banknotes, but the boxes he sent only contained blank canvasses and a new title:
A woman stands in front of an empty frame hung up at the Kunsten Museum in Aalborg, Denmark (Picture: AFP)

When a Danish museum loaned a regarded artist £60,000 to recreate old artworks of his using the banknotes, no one thought he would just pocket the money.

Jens Haaning was commissioned by the Kunsten Museum in Aalborg for an exhibition named ‘Work it Out’.

He was asked to reproduce two works using Danish kroner and Euros to represent the annual salary in Denmark and Austria.

But when gallery staff unpacked the pieces, they were stunned to find two empty glass frames with the money nowhere to be seen.

Even more, the package contained a note saying that Haaning had pocketed the money in order to create a new conceptual art piece called ‘Take the Money and Run’.

In an email to the museum, which is now displayed next to the empty frames, he said: ‘I have chosen to make a new work for the exhibition, instead of showing the two 14- and 11-year-old works respectively.

‘The work is based on/responds to both your exhibition concept and the works that we had originally planned to show.’

Kunsten wants Haaning to return the cash – but he has declined.

People stand in front of an empty frame hung up at the Kunsten Museum in Aalborg, Denmark, on September 28 2021. - The Danish museum loaned an artist $84,000 in cash to recreate old artworks of his using the banknotes, but the boxes he sent only contained blank canvasses and a new title:
Text from the email is up next to the blank canvas (Picture: AFP)
epa09492887 An empty picture frame, an artwork titled 'Take the Money and Run' by Danish artist Jens Haaning, in on display at the museum Kunsten in Aalborg, Sweden, 28 September 2021. The frame should have been filled with around 550.000 Danish kroner in cash, which is supposed to match the average annual salary in respectively Austria and Denmark. Yet, when the art pieces arrived at the museum in Aalborg last week and staff members began unpacking the frames, there was no money in sight, only the empty frames and the tape, which was supposed to hold the money in place. Danish artist Jens Haaning is currently in possession of the cash that should have been inside the frames. The museum loaned him the money, which he is contractually bound to return to the museum, when the exhibition closes on 14 January 2022. EPA/Henning Bagger DENMARK OUT
Kunsten Museum wants the money back (Picture: EPA)

Lasse Andersson, the museum’s director, says he is as puzzled as everyone else about what happened with the commission.

The museum is now considering whether to report him to the police if he has not returned it by the time the exhibition ends in January.

In an interview with a Danish radio, Haaning confirmed he had no intention of complying with his contract and added that recreating his old works would have left him ‘out of pocket’.

He said: ‘The work is that I have taken their money. It is 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.

‘If they are sitting in some s****y job and not getting paid, and are actually being asked to pay money to go to work, then grab what you can and beat it.’

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