A Public Trash Bin
A Dutch museum employee threw away an art installation after thinking it was trash.
The French artist Alexandre Lavet exhibited a piece called All the good times we spent together at the LAM Museum, a food art museum in Lisse, halfway between Amsterdam and The Hague. The work is an acrylic sculpture handpainted to look like cans of Jupiler-brand beer. A statement from the museum reads that the sculptures symbolize “cherished memories shared with dear friends […]. ”. While evenings spent enjoying drinks may seem trivial in the grand scheme of things, they ultimately embody precious moments of connection.” Last week, a man filling in for the museum’s regular technician saw what looked like a pair of empty beer cans on the concrete floor against the wall. Thinking that some maintenance or construction workers had left them behind, he picked them up and threw them in the trash. The LAM makes an effort to exhibit works in unconventional ways, but it seems this location was a little too strange for the employee to recognize the works as art pieces.
The museum recognizes that this was all a simple mistake. The LAM’s director, Sietske van Zanten, said, “He was just doing his job in good faith. In a way, it’s a testament to the effectiveness of Alexandre Lavet’s art.” A museum curator discovered the sculptures in a trash bag. But rather than sweep this incident under the rug, the museum has appeared to embrace it. After salvaging the sculptures from the trash bag and cleaning them, the museum moved Lavet’s pieces to the museum entrance, where they are now prominently displayed on a plinth. Furthermore, their official commentary on the incident is on the front page of their website.
Of course, this is not the first time an art piece has been mistaken for trash and thrown away. For example, Damien Hirst exhibited an installation made from glass bottles, coffee cups, newspapers, and overflowing ashtrays, meant to represent the life of an artist. While this installation was shown at the Eyestorm Gallery in London, the gallery’s overnight cleaner mistakenly threw it away. Later on, Gustav Metzger had some of his work displayed at the Tate Britain in 2004. His installation Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art included a plastic bag full of trash, which a museum employee threw away. Though the original bag was too damaged to use again, Metzger threw another bag together.