Who would not be inspired when surrounded by greatness or by the prospect of a guaranteed audience?
“Fake it until you make it” is an aphorism liberally preached across societies. How else, the hustle culture asks, will one move ahead of the herd and make the cut from could-be to she-whose-time-has-come, if not without a display of a bit of spunk and make-believe? In October last year, for instance, Bonn’s Bundeskunsthalle Museum discovered an uncatalogued painting among its exhibits in a show on identity and immigration while dismantling it. On its Instagram feed, the museum put up the painting, Georgia, and identified its artist, propelling its sale.
A technical staff at the Pinakothek der Moderne museum in Munich, however, found out to his peril recently, that the dictum might not hold true for everyone. The technician was laid off for having hung one of his own artwork in the modern and contemporary section of the gallery that features artwork by Andy Warhol, Paul Klee and others. He had hoped for a career break as an artist. Instead, the painting was removed after visiting hours, the employee dismissed and a criminal complaint for wilful damage to property filed against him by the museum. The employee was also barred from visiting the museum premises.
Who would not be inspired when surrounded by greatness or by the prospect of a guaranteed audience? The museum’s action also points to a less validatory dimension of such spaces. In their role as gatekeepers of high art, there remains an element of asymmetry between their purpose of allowing everyman to partake of their cultural repositories and determining how and what visitors consume as art. A more appropriate gesture, in this case, perhaps, would have been a warning and a second chance — at the job and at having his painting assessed, for better or worse.
