Technician, 51, who hung his own picture in an exhibition about art world glitches, has been sacked and given a three-year ban
The first picture that greeted visitors to the first-floor exhibition space in Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne gallery on 23 February may not have immediately grabbed their attention.
The 60cm by 120cm artwork was a retro-looking photograph of a family of four, with the background and parts of the faces and bodies roughly painted over in white. It was unassuming compared with the video- and photo-based artworks in the adjacent rooms, but only on closer inspection might visitors have wondered why there was no label giving the artist or the work’s title.
The real reason only became public last week: the nameless painting, the content of which has not been previously made public, was not the work of a modern master selected by the curators, but the creation of a 51-year-old technical worker employed by the museum, who had sneaked it into the show in the early hours of the morning.
The Pinakothek, which has one of Europe’s largest collections of modern and contemporary art, removed the painting after closing time, sacked the technician and kept quiet about the incident.
When news of the stunt found its way to the German press via a police report last Monday, the museum downplayed it. “A little hoax, a trifling matter,” a spokesperson said. A first report in Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper framed the incident as a wannabe-artist seeking an “artistic breakthrough” by putting himself in the company of Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys and others.
