Once again, as has happened several times in recent years, diligent cleaning crews at an art gallery have cleared up what seemed to them obvious trash, and to the curators valuable art.
The most recent incident happened last weekend at the Museion gallery in Bolzano. The gallery specializes in modern art, and held a Friday night reception to welcome a new exhibit (above) by Milanese artists Goldschmied and Chiari. It was meant to satirize the ‘dolce vita’ parties and excess of Italy’s political world of the 1980s, and carried the title “We were going to dance tonight.” It consisted of empty bottles strewn across the floor, mixed with cigarette butts, confetti, clothing and shoes.
When the cleaning crew arrived the next morning, with instructions to clear party remnants from the lobby, they found, well, empty bottles strewn across the floor, mixed with cigarette butts, confetti, clothing and shoes. Curator Letizia Ragaglia told the local newspaper “we told them just to clean the foyer…Evidently, they mistook the installation for the foyer.”
Fortunately, the careful cleaners had separated the debris into different bags for proper recycling, and curators will try, using photogaphs, to restore the (intentional) chaos and disorder on the floor.
Other recent mistakes of this sort include
- In Bari, last year, a cleaner threw out a piece containing old biscuit crumbs. €10,000 worth of old biscuit crumbs.
- At an exhibition in London in 2001, a Damien Hirst collection of beer bottles, coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays was neatly cleared away.
- In 2004, an artwork consisting of a bag of paper and cardboard, by German artist Gustav Metzger, was cleared away at London’s Tate Britain.
Perhaps in future, gallery cleaners will need to be accompanied on their rounds by critics!
I would have cleaned it up, too!
Maybe the “cleaners” were, in fact, critics disguised as cleaners. Appreciation of conceptual art has always eluded me, too.